Friday, June 1: Footprints in the Sand

Welcome all to St. Paul’s newest devotional series, dealing with all aspects of caring in our day-to-day relationships. Daily devotions will range from scripture to famous quotes, to famous people and songs, all dealing with how we care for each other in our daily lives. As in previous series, devotions will appear via daily email in the month of June.

We are kicking off our series with the poem “Footprints in the Sand”: a well-known modern poem that asks God where he has been in the poet’s life during all the difficult times. The poet notices that many times throughout his life he sees his life as a journey with two sets of footprints. He also notices a pattern where many times there is only one set of footprints, and asks God why so many times in his life God had allowed him to walk alone, especially during difficult periods. God explained that he had not abandoned the poet but was carrying him through the difficult periods.

As we begin this series on caring and caring relationships, what better example than God? We have been given the ultimate example of how to care for ourselves and each other. God shows us how best we can take care and how to be the ultimate caregiver. By his example we learn to put others first and that caring for our neighbors, many times is done without our care-receiver’s knowledge. Like God in the poem “Footprints” who cares us and we do not even realize it we too can give care to others and being known is not the most important aspect. What becomes apparent is that caring for our fellow man is the most important fact in our lives’ and that whether the person realizes they are in a caring relationship or not at some point.

Terri DeAngelis