Ephesians 4:2
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
My backyard growing up wasn’t just the small yard behind our screen door, I’d always find my way wandering down the road to the canyon close by. I’d scurry down the street with a friend or neighbor, giddy over the exciting adventure that laid ahead for us behind big oak trees and poison oak. I can remember playing all sorts of games. We’d play Survivor Man, pretending the stream and strange leaves were all we had to live off of. We’d play Little House on the Prairie, gathering sticks for firewood and running down trails in our bonnets. The canyon was my backyard.
Without fail our imaginations would run wild and animal tracks no matter what the size became a full-on mission to follow. I know that’s somewhat dangerous, but they mostly ranged from horse hooves to little coyote or dog paws. We’d follow these tracks and allow these footsteps to fill our narrative with excitement.
I guess you could say I’ve been following footsteps since I was a kid. And in some sense, we’ve all been following footsteps since the beginning. In some ways it’s simple, we follow in our parents’ footsteps as we learn basic life things. We follow in our friends’ footsteps as we make TikToks and post on Instagram. We follow celebrities and their fashion advice. We follow pastors and their spiritual advice.
The footsteps I long to follow daily though are those of Jesus. There are so many footsteps to follow and sometimes they lead us places we never meant to go. When I ran mindlessly after coyote tracks I was naively running into trouble. Same with following in the footsteps of my friends in junior high, not the best footsteps to follow some would say. I think we get caught up in the footsteps we see everyday right in front of us and we miss those of Jesus that are painted so beautifully in scripture.
Jesus, fully God and fully man (something that stumps us all to some extent), is the only man I long to follow. His footsteps are sacred holy steps that I can’t help but run after. How can we follow him? That’s easy, the answers are spread out perfectly for us in the bible.
What was Jesus like? Well for starters he was humble, not proud. He was gentle, not aggressive. He was patient, not hurried and anxious. He was loving, kind, and caring. Today, let’s start by simply choosing to follow the footsteps of Jesus. Let’s focus in on how humble, gentle, patient, and loving we’re being in life. Slow down today and try to focus on each of these steps Jesus shows us on his journey and work to follow in some heavenly footsteps.