I’m on the beach again. Running. The South-wester has picked up and sheets of mist drift across the sand. it doesn’t look promising for sunshine today, although it’s still early. There are not many footprints yet. Just the one set ahead of me. Left … right … dot. Left … right … dot. How telling a set of footprints can be. A fairly deep print… the foot much larger than mine… must be a guy… quite heavy. Walking – because the toe is not more deeply imprinted than the heel. The dot? A walking-stick? Obviously not a major support – just a light aid.
Later, I pass the gentleman. He is, as I supposed, fairly heavily set, and he places his walking stick down lightly every second step. “Goeie more.” His greeting is as friendly as the large smile under his wide, grey moustache. His footprint didn’t tell me about his smile.
I run on, thinking that there was a Man who also walked along beaches round about two thousand years ago. Would I have known, from the print, that it was He? Or would I have confused it with any other random footprint? When He stood up from the fire and walked down to stand at the edge of the waves, calling to them, “Throw your nets on the other side,” did His footprints look any different to the other footprints scattered in the sand? He stood at the water’s edge, watching them heave in their nets, heavy with the fish they caught ‘on the other side’. “Are you hungry? I have breakfast.” Would I have known, looking at those prints, that it had been the Miracle-worker who stood there?
The disciples would have known. He touched their morning by standing there and calling out to them. When they beached their boat after a long night’s fishing and walked wearily up the slope to settle around the warm fire eating the lovingly prepared char-grilled fish, the disciples would have known that the footprints dotted around the fire were His. Perhaps no-one else would have known. But where He tread and where He stood not only touched the lives of the disciples – but ours too.
The mist is still wispy and the sun evasive, but I push on, thinking, I hope that where my footprints lie will also touch the lives of others, even if they don’t know.
Written by Sandy after another morning beach run at Cape Saint Francis