The Master’s Footprints

Tom Barnard

 

“He has showed you, O man, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.”

(Micah 6:8)

 

“What asks our Father of His children save

Justice and mercy and humility,

A reasonable service of good deeds,

Pure living, tenderness to human needs,

Reverence, and trust, and prayer for light to see

The Master’s footprints in our daily ways?

No knotted scourge, nor sacrificial knife,

But the calm beauty of an ordered life

Whose every breathing is unworded praise.”

--John Greenleaf Whittier

 

I love the Charlie Daniels television commercial for a well-known national insurance company. The announcer opens with a rhetorical question, “Can Charley Daniels play a mean fiddle?” Charlie comes on camera with a high-energy, unaccompanied, scorching riff with a fiddle, pounding his cowboy boot into the floor as the violin bow-hairs go flying every which way. At the end, he hands the violin and bow to a stunned man in a tux and says, “That’s how you do it, son.” My reaction when I saw the ad for the first time was, “I hope that wasn’t a ‘Strad’ Charlie was playing.”

 

Have you ever asked yourself the question the prophet Micah asked himself, “What does God expect of me?” You might be surprised how short the answer will be. Micah listed three things:

 

“Act justly…love mercy…walk humbly with your God.”

 

Could it really be that simple? Could the laws of God be reduced to a short, simple summary of three?” Would you believe two? Or one? When the Pharisee asked Jesus which of the commandments was greatest, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And secondly, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

 

Could it really be that simple? Jesus said it. It must be true. And that’s how he wants us to do it.

 

Heavenly Father, keep me from making the gospel too complex. Help me to understand that your plan for me is to love you and love others. Help me to keep it simple. Help me to keep it practical. Help me to keep it personal. As Easter approaches, help me to understand the central truth of the gospel: Jesus died to save sinners and to prepare them to spend eternity with him in heaven. In the meantime, let me see the “Master’s footprints” in my daily walk. Amen.