Mysterious Footprints by Gail Purath

“Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.” Psalm 77: 19

If I’m an expert at anything, it’s moving. Because my father’s profession required frequent moves, I spent my childhood in twenty-one different locations in six states. Then I married a career soldier; and in our thirty-eight years of marriage, we’ve lived in more than twenty homes in nine states and two European countries.

Yes, I know how to move and how to prepare for a move; but that doesn’t mean that our moves have always gone smoothly. For example, there was the time my husband and I were preparing to move from Virginia to New York. We had reserved a U-haul weeks in advance; but when we arrived to pick up the truck, we learned that the dealer had made a mistake. No trucks were available nor were there any available at the other local dealers! Because we needed to be out of our house that day and in New York the next, we were “between a rock and a hard place.” Without a truck, there would be significant problems whatever we chose to do.

We always prayed about our moves, but we had been especially prayerful about this move because my husband was retiring from the Army so we could start full-time ministry. We felt sure we were following God’s guidance, but suddenly His footprints were hidden from us.

I thought of this situation the last time I read Exodus 14. If there were ever a people caught “between a rock and a hard place,” it was the Israelites as they stood on the shores of the Red Sea watching the Egyptian army approach. They had two apparent choices—an angry enemy on one side and a raging sea on the other. No wonder they complained, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?” They couldn’t attempt to cross the sea with truckloads (I mean wagonloads) of belongings, elderly people, small children and babies. And they knew death or slavery awaited if the Egyptians caught up with them.

The Israelites could not have anticipated God’s footprints. How could they have known that God would hide the Egyptians in darkness while He dried the sea bottom? Who would have guessed that God would take all night to perform this miracle when He could have done it instantly? And surely no one expected God to release the Egyptian army to follow them into the sea. God’s plan to save His people was far more mysterious and meaningful than they could have imagined.

God can also leave His mysterious footprints in the small events of our lives. Our move from Virginia to New York is one example. Shortly after learning that no trucks were available, an out-of-town friend (who didn’t know about our situation) showed up unexpectedly at our door. He lived within an hour of our destination in New York, was heading home that afternoon, and just happened to be driving an empty truck large enough for our belongings! There was no way we could have anticipated God’s footprints, but we were certainly happy to find them. God’s plan not only met our deadlines, it also saved us the cost of a rental truck!

The Red Sea event encourages us to look for God’s footprints when we are faced with two bad choices, whether we need something as a simple as a truck or something as critical as an escape route from our enemies. This event also symbolizes the most important choice any of us will ever make. Every one of us stands spiritually between a rock and a hard place—between a perfectly holy God on one side and our personal sins (which are punishable by eternal death) on the other. God wants to free us from our slavery to sin just as He wanted to free the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. But there is no way this can possibly happen unless we discover God’s footprints “beneath the sea.” And God’s salvation footprints are the most incredible of all because they are the nail-scarred prints left for us by God’s own Son, Jesus.



Gail has been doing women’s ministry for over thirty years. She enjoys researching and writing her own Bible studies, and her present passion is an overview of the Bible she calls “The Bible’s Love Story.” The Puraths have spent the last four years in Budapest, Hungary where they do Christian work. They plan to return to the States this summer and look forward to more time with their two married children and five grandchildren.