For Lent, I'm reading The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus by the Franciscan friar Ubertino da Casale (1259-1330). This morning, I was struck by the following line:

His [Francis of Assisi] whole aim, in public and in private, was to reproduce in himself and in others those footprints of Christ which had been covered over and forgotten. (Francis of Assisi: The Early Documents, vol 3 The Prophet, p. 148)

That quote inspired me to offer the following twist on the classic allegorical poem "Footprints":

One night I dreamed that I was walking on the beach with my Lord.
Many scenes from my life passed through the sky.
In some scenes, I noticed two sets of footprints.

In others, only one.

And I was bothered, because
in the scenes where I had felt the most
righteous, justified, and confident,
I saw only one set of footprints.

I turned to my Lord and asked:
"Why Lord, in the times of my greatest consolation,
do I only see one set of footprints?"

My Lord replied,
"My son, that is because you had covered up my tracks."

Photo by Hansueli Krapf. This file was uploaded with Commonist. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I wonder: How many times have we covered up the Lord's footprints because they are heading to a place where we don't want to go, a place that challenges all our presumptions and ideas?