In his footprint?

What does it mean to walk in his footprint? I found a couple of images that helped me visualise footprints – then thought about a lion’s footprints – I remembered how I felt him padding through Narnia for the first time, over 40 years ago. “He’s on the move!” the beavers said, excited. I’m excited – he is on the move!

Recently, I walked the sea wall alone – a rare occurrence - but I was content to sense the presence of the Lion alongside me. When as a man, he walked dusty mud-packed roads in Palestine, he would have stirred the dust with his sandals – dust that he’d once used to form a human being.

I wowed my way through that – had he reached down into Essex dust, this very dirt, to get his handful? Or had he called individual specks from across the cosmos and the garden – space he’d created – gleaning from each valley and mountain, each volcano and lake, each glacier and forest, to shape and form Adam? Had some of that dust been drawn from the very earth I was walking?

In the garden, were there a few grains of what we now call Essex? Was it somewhere he walked in the cool of the day with his companions? Did the land rejoice, feel ‘fit for purpose’ with his feet upon it as the very mud of Israel must have rejoiced when he walked there?

If that’s true, then we do indeed walk in his footprint.