She was a 45-year old minister’s wife, a lifelong resident
of Fall River, Massachusetts (see picture here), a teacher, and the editor of
two journals during her lifetime. So, Mary Bridges Canady Slade knew something
about writing, and given her background as a teacher, may have been trying to
educate someone with the words she composed for “Footprints of Jesus” in 1871. Do
her words tell us that she was merely an able poet, or was she also sharing
something of herself, something that she believed in deeply enough to record so
that it would stick with its hearers, reminding them of her? What do you think,
as you get a glimpse of her?
Mary Slade evidently wrote something that reflected her
beliefs and the actions she’d been living in 1871. Not much is written of her, except
that she was a compassionate Christian, a characteristic that adorned her along
with the few facts of her life. You can see she must have struggled with her
life of kindness, a condition that she shared in the words she wrote. She wasn’t
wearing rose-colored glasses, admitting that ‘helping the weak’, and ‘serving
the poor and lowly’, came hand-in-hand with ‘weeping’ and ‘cross-bearing’. But,
we can guess that she persevered, keeping her goal -- the goal of any Christian
– in her mind’s eye. Following Him meant going through valleys, sure, but it
also rewarded the disciple with paradise, a fact that was especially compelling
to Mary as she reflected on this in the final two stanzas. Whatever specific
circumstances were at work in her life in 1871, Slade’s message was two-fold. Serving
Him by taking care of her fellow man might be heart-rending, but that’s the
path to Him, and to lifelong – in fact, eternal – happiness. Being a minister’s
wife must have facilitated her hearing this message consistently, perhaps even daily.
Fusing this role as a minister’s wife, and undoubtedly as his ear, with her
training as a teacher and skill as an editor gave her the capacity to tell us
how she was spurred to follow her Lord. Perhaps this was a message with which
she herself was becoming increasingly conscious – a life that longed for the
next plane of existence.
It’s a message that may be impossible to coax or instruct. It
has to be shown through one’s example. It’s a passion that must be lived. Why
did Mary Slade live just 11 years longer after composing a song about devotion
to God? We don’t know, but she was 56, and was editor by this time of the journal
Wide Awake. It was pitched at
children, a theme that likewise influenced her previous venture as an editor of
the New England Journal of Education.
The very title Wide Awake carries a
message for children, doesn’t it? Don’t hide yourself from a life that will
make you wise, it suggests. Be aware how to best live, and so live on after you’re
done here. Mary Slade must have internalized that message, probably in part to
demonstrate it for the children who might be watching. To teach the kids. Or is
it just for kids? Follow His footprints.
See original 7 verses of the song here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/f/o/o/footprin.htm
A biography of the man who published Wide Awake, Slade’s occupational-editorial effort until she died: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lothrop
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