Rev Jim Rea:

The name meant nothing to me and the caller seemed surprised. “She’s famous!” he exclaimed. “Margaret is the author of the book ‘Footprints In the Sand’. I immediately realised who she was. I was familiar with the poem; having seen it in numerous places on plaques and inspirational cards, in gift shops and in many of the homes of people I visited.

Many had found solace from it through difficult situations, but I was totally unaware of the author’s name. I was pleased to have Margaret and her husband Paul to come to the church to speak.

She recounted how in 1963 she had a dream and the words came to her, explaining how the poem is based on Christian beliefs and describes life as a person walking on a beach with God, leaving two sets of footprints in the sand.

Sometimes the two footprints merge into one, and this happens especially at the lowest and most hopeless moments of the person’s life. The person thinks God has abandoned them, but God explains that it was during their times of trial and suffering, when they could only see only one set of footprints, that God was in fact carrying them.

In her book ‘Footprints in the Sand’ Margie, as she is better known, tells numerous stories about people, who, in the darkest moments of their lives, found hope and inspiration from the poem.

One day a few years ago, I conducted a funeral in a small house in north Belfast where an elderly lady, a much loved grandmother, had died. Her grandson, a young man in his twenties, asked if he could say a few words. He seemed somewhat nervous, but I agreed to let him speak.

When his time came, he lifted a small framed card of ‘Footprints’ from beside the television, explaining that he wanted to read it, and that he had served on two tours with the British Army in Afghanistan.

Holding it up, he said: “This was my granny’s prayer for me.”

He had kept it in the breast pocket of his uniform and read it every day.

I then explained how the author had been to our church on the Shankill Road a few years earlier to tell her story. This time, instead of the stories I had read about ‘Footprints’, this was a face to face encounter with a young man who found hope in the darkest and most dangerous days of his life, in the deserts of Afghanistan.

Truly, ‘Footprints in the Sand’.