Beautiful Feet

by Barbara Chadwick



…how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Today we were driving through Kansas. A tourist shop at a rest stop had a T shirt with the message, “I’ll work for shoes” under a picture of a pair of high heels!
When I was a little girl missionaries would sometimes come to our church and tell about their work in a foreign land. I would listen enthralled as they told about walking to villages and telling the people about the good news of Jesus and His love and how they embraced the message and accept Jesus as their Savior.

My father was a lay minister who was asked to go into some out of the way places to preach. Many of those places were ranches in New Mexico.

One place was the building in the picture above. It’s just a shell of the building now but in the early 1950’s it was a very attractive place. It was a one room schoolhouse in a ranching community. I was a little girl. We went there on a Sunday evening. The chairs were all occupied. The gas lamps on the walls hissed, giving light to the room. The ranchers and their families listened attentively as my father spoke the good news of God’s love and the provision of salvation He made for us by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to take the penalty for our sin.

When I was older he was sent to a place called El Paso Gap. Again it was a one room schoolhouse – this time in the mountains in a corner of New Mexico. It was a white wooden building. The year was 1952. Ranchers and their families came from miles around to the Sunday service on horses or in horse drawn wagons. They paid daddy with milk, eggs, butter and money for gas. Daddy, Mother and the five of us children would drive the 150 mile round trip every other week-end. The ranchers loved us and kept us for the week-end each time. We loved them and eagerly anticipated each trip.

Another time he was sent to the Flying H Ranch outside of Roswell, NM. We took a small portable organ which Mother played. We sang the hymns the cowboys wanted to sing and daddy preached the good news of salvation. The service was in the rancher’s house and all the cowboys came. What a neat memory for us children.

We went to a place called Salt Creek, also near Roswell.  I was nine and was asked to play the piano. We sang and daddy preached. Sometimes everyone brought food. There was a patch of the most magnificent watermelons just over the fence. We were given some and have never had another that tasted as wonderful.

Steve Green sings a song called, “May All Who Come Behind Us Find Us Faithful.” The last verse says:
After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone and our children sift through all we’ve left behind.
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
become the light that leads them to the road we each must find.

Refrain:
O, may all who come behind us find us faithful. May the fire of our devotion light their way.
May the footprints that we leave, lead them to believe and the lives we live inspire them to obey.
O may all who come behind us find us faithful.

May we be faithful and may our feet be beautiful!
As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”