How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!
- From Romans 10
One of the most compelling moments in my Christian walk, since my re-commitment in the summer of 1980, was the first time I heard this praise song. I'm pretty sure it was at North Texas State University, during the year 1983-84, when I was there for grad school. I began attending a weekly Bible Study, and during the praise set, the first time I went, they sang this.
The entire crowd there, of probably over fifty people, filled the room with a loud rejoicing in song, as they proclaimed OUR GOD REIGNS!
The chorus is set up with the words repeated by Paul in the letter to the Romans: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!
Even the feet are beautiful.
Now, I am not a fan of feet. Let me be totally candid and risk getting condemned by the three people that will read this: It's one of the few things I don't like about summer. I'd rather not see people's bare feet. Sorry, that's just me.
What if God was thinking about people like me, when inspiring these words: Even their feet are beautiful!
Not just any old set of dirty, scaly feet! No . . . the feet of a weary traveler, walking from place to place . . . with Good News of the Christ!
Today, the world needs Good News. And it needs beauty! The news today will be stark. It will be discouraging. A paraphrase of the nightly news in 2023 might be accurately rephrased in this way:
Leading off tonight's news - today the world saw the ranks of people that share Good News decreased by another 20,000, as more people left faith in Christ, to adopt the new Woke agenda of sex, sexuality, exhibitionism, and voyeurism.
The self-absorbed, instant gratification of modern political "reforms," that emphasize feeling good and it's corollaries: You Be You, Make people respect your boundaries, and You Deserve (fill in the blank), really is not Good News. None of these things have any connection to permanent happiness. They have nothing to do with anything eternal. A quick surge of happy chemicals only leave you hungover, moments later, craving more.
We need Good News. And the Good News is that we don't have to FEEL good to be happy.
We've had enough of temporary beauty, like that of modern celebrities that obsess over fake means to remain "youthful." How about real beauty - the beauty of weathered feet . . . that share Good News!
