by Demi Prentiss

Michael Piazza is the pastor of Virginia Highland Church in Atlanta, Georgia. In his Oct. 26 edition of “Liberating Word,” his blog, he wrote:

From out of a small Sunday school class in Scotland went a young man named David Livingston. He went to Africa, traveling from village to village treating the sick and telling them about God’s love. Many years later, a missionary visiting one of those villages began to tell a story about a gentle compassionate man named Jesus. An old woman interrupted him and said, “Many years ago that man visited our village, but we called him David.”

 

From a Sunday school in Scotland, you get the footprints of Jesus in the sands of Africa. Are the footprints of Jesus to be seen where you live and work?

 

How would your life be different if you saw yourself as a missionary of God’s compassion and grace? We are not the kind of missionaries who claim to have all the answers and demand that people change their mind and see it our way. Our only job is to offer a word of hope, the hope we have found; a touch of grace, the grace that is beginning to change our lives; a sign of compassion, the compassion offered to us when we least deserved it.

In the places where you live and work and play and study and drive and shop and worship, are the footprints of Jesus visible there?  How might you encourage others – and yourself – to make sure those are the footprints you leave?