"Footprints", also known as "Footprints in the Sand", is a popular allegorical text written in prose.
Video Footprints (poem)
Content
This popular text describes an experience in which a person is walking on a beach with God. They leave two sets of footprints in the sand behind them. Looking back, the tracks represent various stages of the speaker's life. At various points, the two trails dwindle to one, especially at the lowest and most hopeless moments of the person's life. When questioning God, believing that the Lord must have abandoned his love during those times, God gives the explanation: "During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."
Maps Footprints (poem)
Authorship and origins
The original authorship of the poem is disputed, with a number of people claiming to have penned it. In 2008, Rachel Aviv in a Poetry Foundation article discusses the claims of Burrell Webb, Mary Stevenson, Margaret Fishback Powers and Carolyn Joyce Carty. Later that year, The Washington Post, covering a lawsuit between the claims of Stevenson, Powers and Carty, said that "At least a dozen people" had claimed credit for the poem.
The three authors who have most strenuously promoted their authorship are Margaret Powers (née Fishback), Carolyn Carty, and Mary Stevenson.
Canadian Margaret Fishback Powers says she wrote the poem on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, in mid-October, 1964. Powers is among the contenders who have resorted to litigation in hopes of establishing a claim. (She is occasionally confused with similarly-named American writer Margaret Fishback.)
Carolyn Carty also claims to have written the poem in 1963, at 6 years old, based on an earlier work by her great-great aunt, a Sunday school teacher. She is known to be a hostile contender of the "Footprints" poem and declines to be interviewed for it to this day, although she commonly writes letters to those who write about the poem online.
Mary Stevenson is also a purported author of the poem circa 1936.
Powers published an autobiography in 1993 ; a Stevenson biography was published in 1995 ; and a collection of poetry by Carty with a claim to authorship of Footprints was published in 2004.
Popular usage of "footprints in the sand"
Prior to its appearance in the late 1970s as a key phrase in the poem, and its popular tile, the phrase "footprints in the sand" occurred in very limited contexts, including prose, published work titles, and poetry.
The most dominant usage in prose is in the context of actual or fictional adventure or mystery stories or articles; these would include Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe; the 1926 post-kidnapping discovery of Aimee Semple McPherson in the northern Mexican desert; numerous American true crime stories in the 20th century; and innumerable fictional tales.
Rather less often does the phrase appear in a religious context, such as a sermon or religious treatise. It also appears occasionally in the context of a paleontological, archaeological or anthropological work.
In the two centuries prior to 1980--when the subject piece of this work exploded into popular American culture--many dozens of books and articles and sermons appeared with "Footprints in the sand" as the complete or partial title. While exemplars exist from all aforementioned disciplines, a number of books and articles used "footprints in the sand" as the title for works describing the lives and influences of Christian missionaries in widely varying locales.
The above observations also apply to simply "Footprints" as a title; for example, a number of high schools and at least one college yearbook have been named "Footprints" for many decades, and "footprints" is a commonly adopted theme for such works.
A well-distributed poem titled "Footprints" appeared in 1958.
A steady sequence of 19th century poems, often intended as hymn lyrics, used the phrase "footprints in the sand". The most influential on common usage was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1839 poem, A Psalm of Life,
in which typically (only) the final line of this stanza is remembered:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Within a decade, the final phrase was being widely used in public discourse without attribution, apparently in the assumption that any literate reader should know its origin. In some usages, "of time" disappeared; later, "on" seems to become "in".
Biblical background
Deuteronomy 1:31 presents the concept of "God bearing you"; the 1609 Douay-Rheims Bible Old Testament translation from Latin into English uses the wording
And in the wilderness (as thou hast seen) the Lord thy God hath carried thee, as a man is wont to carry his little son, all the way that you have come, until you came to this place.
In 1971, the New American Standard Bible used the language "... and in the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God carried you ...". Nearly identical wording is used in other late 20th century translations, including the New International Version of 1978.
Possible 19th century origins
May Riley Smith's poem, "If", published (without attribution) in the Indianapolis Journal in 1869, includes a stanza that describes God's footprints in sand alongside a boy's:
If I could know those little feet were shod in sandals wrought of light in better lands,
And that the foot-prints of a tender God ran side by side with his, in golden sands,
I could bow cheerfullly, and kiss the rod, since Benny was in wiser, safer hands.
Smith's poem was widely republished over the subsequent half-century by many North American newspapers and in poetry anthologies.
June Hadden Hobbs suggested that the modern Footprints origins lie in Mary B. C. Slade's 1871 hymn "Footsteps of Jesus" as "almost surely the source of the notion that Jesus's footprints have narrative significance that influences the way believers conduct their life stories .... it allows Jesus and a believer to inhabit the same space at the same time. [...] Jesus travels the path of the believer, instead of the other way round".
Aviv suggests that the source of the modern Footprints allegory is the opening paragraph of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's 1880 sermon "The Education of the Sons of God".
He wrote:
And did you ever walk out upon that lonely desert island upon which you were wrecked, and say, "I am alone, -- alone, -- alone, -- nobody was ever here before me"? And did you suddenly pull up short as you noticed, in the sand, the footprints of a man? I remember right well passing through that experience; and when I looked, lo! it was not merely the footprints of a man that I saw, but I thought I knew whose feet had left those imprints; they were the marks of One who had been crucified, for there was the print of the nails. So I thought to myself, "If he has been here, it is a desert island no longer."
In 1883, an American encyclopedic volume of female-authored hymns included a hymn by English poet Jetty Vogel expressed the concept of looking back on one's life "At the Portal" using a pathway metaphor, including looking at one's footprints as they stayed (and strayed) from "the way". The hymn also introduces the notion of angel footsteps alongside, but lacks the "I carried you" concept critical to the modern Footprints work.
In 1892, the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) newspaper ran a short story "Footprints in the Sand" written by Flora Haines Loughead for the Star. The work uses a metaphor for Christ, of a father following footprints in the sand of another's child headed for danger, as he wonders, "Why was it that there was nowhere any sign of a larger footprint to guide the little babyish feet?"
Possible 20th century origins
In 1918, Mormon publication The Children's Friend re-published the Loughead piece (credited, but misspelled "Laughead"), ensuring a wider distribution in the western states.
Chicago area poet Lucille Veneklasen frequently submitted poems to the Chicago Tribune newspaper in the 1940s and 1950s; one entitled "Footprints" was published in the Tribune in late 1958:
I walked the road to sorrow--a road so dark with care, so lonely, I was certain that no one else was there.
But suddenly around me were beams of light, stretched wide; and then I saw that someone was walking by my side.
And when I turned to notice this road which I had trod, I saw two sets of footprints--My own... and those of God.
Veneklasen's poem later appeared occasionally in newspaper obituaries, commonly lacking attribution, and often with the deceased substituted for "I".
Early documentable history
The earliest known formally dated publications of any variants of the poem are from 1978, with three different descriptions of the person and also the setting.
The first to appear in July, 1978, in a small Iowa town newspaper, is a very concise (six-sentence) version featuring an "elderly man" and "rocky roads". There is no attribution for this piece, and this version does not seem to have appeared subsequently in any publication.
An elderly man, who had lived his life and left this world to go and meet his Maker asked the Lord a question.
"As I'm looking down on the paths I've trod, I see two sets of footprints on the easy paths.
But down the rocky roads I see only one set of footprints.
"Tell me, Lord, why did you let me go down all those hard paths alone?"
The Lord smiled and simply replied, "Oh, my son, you've got that all wrong!
I carried you over those hard paths."
The second, and most complete early appearance, was in a September, 1978, issue of Evangel, a then semi-monthly Church of God publication. This version is very similar to the "Carty" version but is credited to "Author Unknown--(Submitted by Billy Walker)".
A third version appeared in October, 1978, in two California papers, first in Oakland and twelve days later in Shafter, featuring a "young woman" and a "sandy pathway" in a "desert wilderness". This version does not appear to have re-emerged later.
[A] young woman who was going through hard times ... began to pray to God for help.
... [S]uddenly in her mind's eye she saw two sets of footprints side by side on a sandy pathway.
Immediately her spirits lifted because she interpreted this to mean that God was with her and was walking beside her.
Then the picture changed. She now saw the footprints located in a vast desert wilderness, and instead of two sets of footprints, there was only one.
Why was God no longer beside her? As despair settled back over her, she began to cry.
Then the inner voice of God softly spoke and said, "I have not left you. The one set of footprints is mine.
You see, I am carrying you through the wilderness."
In 1979, five appearances occurred: one in a small Louisiana newspaper, two in widely syndicated newspapers columns, one on a nationwide radio program, and one in a prominent evangelist's biography.
In January, 1979, the Opelousas, Louisiana, Daily World published a near exact Carty version but with a "My dear child" mutation at the end, and no attribution.
Christian televangelist and columnist Robert Schuller noted in his column that a reader had sent him a story; it is unclear whether the version presented in the column--which casts a "pilgrim" as the human character--was used verbatim or was rewritten by Schuller: this particular version has not been re-published after the column's original nationwide publication during March-August, 1979.
[A] pilgrim arrived in heaven and God said to him, "Would you like to see where you've come from?"
When the pilgrim responded that he would, God unfolded the story of his whole life and he saw footprints from the cradle to the grave.
Only there were not only the footprints of the pilgrim, but another set of prints alongside.
The pilgrim said, "I see my footprints, but whose are those?"
And the Lord said, "Those are My footprints. I was with you all the time."
Then they came to a dark, discouraging valley and the pilgrim said, "I see only one set of footprints through that valley.
I was so discouraged. You were not there with me. It was just as I thought--I was so all alone!"
Then the Lord said, "Oh, but I was there. I was with you the whole time.
You see, those are MY footprints. I carried you all through that valley."
In April, 1979, the Havre Daily News in Montana published a variant of the Carty version, told in first person, with slightly different punctuation, and a "never, never" alteration to match the "precious, precious child" of the previous sentence. The author of the local weekly column noted that it had been supplied by a friend who had "first heard [it] when Paul Harvey quoted it on his radio program." It is unknown whether the listener had copied it down from memory or received a written version from Mr. Harvey or elsewhere. No recordings or transcriptions of Mr. Harvey's daily radio news and commentary broadcasts are known to have survived.
Advice columnist Ann Landers published an exact copy of the Stevenson version in July, 1979. The column indicates that the correspondent who provided the work, claims to have carried a tattered copy around "for years" with no further explanation of its publication source. Ann re-ran the piece in late February, 1982, in response to reader demands, and noted that it had also appeared in Reader's Digest in the meantime. The 1982 republication added a novel phrase "I would never desert you".
Christian televangelist Jerry Falwell's 1979 biography, Jerry Falwell: Aflame for God, opens a chapter with an expanded "a man dreamed" version.
1980 saw several significant publications in magazine and newspaper columns, and in a presidential campaign speech.
The February, 1980, Reader's Digest version is condensed from the 1979 Ann Landers' column version.
Humorist and columnist Erma Bombeck published a condensed version of Stevenson's variant in July, 1980.
During the 1980 United States presidential campaign, then-candidate Ronald Reagan used a variant of Footprints--featuring Mr. Reagan as the human--as the closing lines in an August speech to 15,000 evangelical leaders in a Dallas, Texas, arena. President Reagan used Footprints again in a speech given at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, 1981. These versions appear to be Stevenson paraphrases.
Influence
Several songs have been based on the poem.
In 1981, Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia of Buckner & Garcia wrote backing music for the poem, which was recorded by Edgel Groves. It hit #1 on both the U.S. Country chart and the Christian and Country Gospel chart, and was the most requested song of American radio DJs in 1981.
In 1983, Cristy Lane released country gospel version of the song called "Footprints in the Sand". The song peaked at #64 on Billboard's U.S. Country chart and #30 on the U.S. Christian chart.
In 1984, Ken Brown published a version of the poem in rhyme and rhythm as opposed to the more commonly known free form versions popular today.
In 1994, English singer Chris de Burgh included a summary of the poem as the fourth stanza in his song "Snows of New York" in the album This Way Up: In my dream we walked, you and I to the shore / Leaving footprints by the sea / And when there was just one set of prints in the sand / That was when you carried me.
Larry Norman released an album named after the poem in 1994, which was a major influence for the entire record. He had 16 tracks on the album, with "If You Don't Love My Lord" being the most popular track.
Per Magnusson, David Kreuger, Richard Page, and Simon Cowell wrote a song based on the poem, called "Footprints in the Sand", which was recorded by Leona Lewis. It appears on Lewis's debut album Spirit. Another song inspired by the poem called "Footprints" was recorded by Dancehall/Reggae group T.O.K.
The poem is parodied in the Half Man Half Biscuit song "Footprints", off the 1993 album This Leaden Pall. In the song, the Lord explains the fact that there is only one set of footprints this way: "During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, that must have been when I was appearing on . . . Junior Kick Start!"
The poem was also used in the memorial service for Air France Flight 447 on 3 June 2009.
In 2016, a larger-than-life sculpture inspired by the poem was installed at Pippen Memorial Park, in Carthage, Texas. Designed and executed by local artist Bob Harness, the monument contains an inscription of the poem in its base.
See also
- Third Man factor
References
External links
- Who wrote Footprints?
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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