Footprints
As they were watching, [Christ] was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. – Acts 1:9b (NRSV)
One thing my generation (X) abhors more than anything is sentimentality. We are a sarcastic people and anything that smacks of precious earnestness is, at best, mocked and at worst shut down altogether.
So if you are also Gen X and are still reading after I generalized about you (which we also hate), hear me out when I tell you that the mid-century poem about footprints, the one shellacked onto a piece of burnt wood and hanging in your grandma’s TV room, is actually worth considering. The idea that Christ is with you in the hardest times is not just memeable corn. It’s an expression of faith so deep that it transcends all of our protective irony.
The image of footprints as a reminder of Christ’s presence did not just swim into the collective unconscious in the twentieth century. It’s actually about six hundred years older than that plaque you tried to sell at the estate sale. You’ll find it in churches like this one in Norfolk, England, with a frame of stained glass that depicts Christ out of sight except for his feet dangling from a cloud and—under his bare toes—muddy footprints on the ground.
Things hadn’t been easy for that first generation of Jesus followers after his crucifixion, and they were about to get a lot harder. But there in plain sight is proof for Medieval church goers, and kids in bell bottoms eating sugar cereal and watching inappropriate television at grandma’s house, and you, and me. Christ wasn’t an absentee parent, and the first disciples weren’t latchkey kids. Christ was right there beside them, especially when things got really tough.
Prayer
Friend Jesus – You’re still here. Thanks. And we mean that. Amen.
About the AuthorRev. Jennifer Garrison (formerly Brownell) is a writer, spiritual director and pastor living in the Pacific Northwest. Her published work most recently appeared in the book The Words of Her Mouth: Psalms for the Struggle, available from The Pilgrim Press.