Origin
“Footprints in the Sand” is a short prose poem widely displayed in homes and churches across the English-speaking world, often framed as scripture and quoted as if it were a Bible verse. It is not in the Bible.
The poem’s authorship has been actively disputed:
- Mary Stevenson claimed she wrote the poem in 1936 at age fourteen, after a difficult day. Her family’s legal pursuit of her authorship claim was supported by a 2008 ruling by a U.S. court in the Stevenson family’s favour.
- Margaret Fishback Powers (Canadian) claimed she wrote the poem in 1964 during a beach walk with her then-fiancé.
- Carolyn Joyce Carty claimed authorship dating to 1963.
Each claimant has independently registered copyright at different times, and several legal proceedings over the years have addressed the question without producing universal acceptance of any single attribution.
The poem itself, in its standard English form, postdates the King James Version by over three centuries and appears in no manuscript or translation of the Bible. It is a devotional poem, not a biblical text.
The Bible addresses divine accompaniment during difficulty in many places — Deuteronomy 31:6 (He will never leave you nor forsake you), Isaiah 46:4 (I will carry you), Psalm 23:4 (You are with me) — but uses entirely different imagery. The biblical material rarely employs beach or sand imagery; the dominant images for God’s presence in trouble are shepherding (Psalm 23), parental carrying (Isaiah 46), and walking-with (Deuteronomy 31).
The poem draws on the theme of divine accompaniment that scripture does articulate, but its specific imagery and narrative are not biblical.