Foot Prints In My Dust

Look closely and you can see the foot print...


The other night I was sitting in the recliner talking with my husband about the day’s events. As I glanced over at the end table between us I noticed a thin layer of dust in the lamp light. "Well," I thought, "another task to add to tomorrow’s list”.

However, as I listened to Jeff I noticed an impression in the dust. It was a foot print…a rather small foot print…and the toes were pointed toward the window. It dawned on me that it was our three-year-old, Leif’s foot print. Suddenly the irksome dust turned into a memory recording medium.

I considered how such a foot print could have been made. I remembered the previous day’s excitement at daddy’s arrival from work. Leif was in the kitchen playing as I prepared supper. Upon hearing our truck pull into the drive he ran into the living room and leaped up onto the end table to peer out of the window. Jeff opened the front door to Leif’s squeals of delight and a hearty, “Welcome home, Daddy!”

It is an awesome blessing to have a three year old to show me life through his perspective. At his eye level the world looks different. A daddy coming home is the equivalent to winning the Publisher’s Clearing House. The arrival of winter’s first snow, gives you a reason to dance. Time spent wrestling with your parents after dinner is better than a day at an amusement park. A bed-time story is more exciting than a trip to the movie theater. A bowl of ice cream is a complete escape, a new toy a marvelous delight. A kind word of encouragement is not only heard but it is taken to heart and recorded in the annals of his mind, and displayed in the ear to ear expression of emotion on his face.

Tubula Rasa…blank slate. We all start out this way. We come from our mother’s wombs meeting life with awe and wonder. Somewhere along the way we become jaded and affected. We are hurt and wounded by other’s words. We are tempted, enticed and lured away by our own desires. Where do those desires come from? We are not born with a sinful nature, yet as our exposure to this fallen world lengthens day by day, so does our aptitude to sin. Somewhat like the chances of skin cancer increase with every bad sunburn. Like the Roman writer so aptly says,

“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Thanks be to Jesus. He had that three-year-old perspective of life and urged others to have it as well. He said that, “whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” It is by him and through him that we can regain this child like perspective. We can once again meet this life with awe and wonder.

Jeff reminds me often that God gave us parents to rear us and children to finish the job. I know he is right when I am taught such a beautiful lesson as this.