Isaiah paints the picture of a breathless runner racing across the mountains, dust on his legs, sweat on his brow—yet God calls his feet beautiful. Why? Because he is carrying the best news imaginable: peace restored, salvation announced, and a bold declaration to Zion that her God truly reigns. That same good news has reached us in Jesus Christ—and now it wants to keep running, through you.

God’s Surprising Standard of Beauty

We live in a world obsessed with the visible—what looks impressive, polished, and put-together. Yet God looks at something as ordinary and unnoticed as feet and calls them beautiful when they carry His message. He did the same with David, reminding Samuel that man looks at outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Paul echoes Isaiah when he describes preachers of the gospel, showing that this “beautiful feet” promise ultimately finds its fulfillment in Christ and then in all who proclaim Him (Romans 10:14–15). Jesus Himself is the true Herald, bringing good news of peace through His cross and resurrection.

This flips everything for us. You may feel painfully ordinary, stumbling over your words or unsure how to share your faith. But God is not impressed with your polish; He delights in your obedience. We are, as Paul says, jars of clay holding a treasure (2 Corinthians 4:7). The message—not the messenger—creates beauty. When you carry the news of Christ crucified and risen, your steps—even into the most mundane places—become beautiful in heaven’s eyes.

Your God Reigns in a Restless World

At the core of Isaiah’s vision is one short, electric proclamation: “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7). This is not wishful thinking; it is the bedrock reality behind the gospel. The God who spoke through Isaiah has established His reign in a new and decisive way through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The risen Christ declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18). The psalmist says that the LORD reigns and is robed in majesty (Psalm 93:1). The good news is not just that you can be forgiven, but that you are invited to live under the gracious rule of a victorious King.

This matters when the headlines scream chaos and your personal life feels fragile. The messenger shouting, “Your God reigns!” is not blind to pain; he is announcing a greater reality that outlasts it. When anxiety presses in, you can bring your requests to God, and His peace will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6–7). Before you speak this good news to anyone else today, let it preach to you. Let the reign of Christ rule over your fears, your plans, your relationships. The steadiness you find there is part of the beauty you carry into the lives of others.

Sent Into Your Everyday World

Isaiah’s herald is not a religious professional on a stage; he’s an ordinary runner on a dusty path. In Christ, you are that runner. Scripture says you are an ambassador for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through you (2 Corinthians 5:20). Paul pictures believers with feet fitted with the readiness of the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15). This means your “mission field” is not just distant nations—it’s your kitchen table, your office, your classroom, your text threads, your neighborhood sidewalks.

So, what might “beautiful feet” look like on this ordinary day? It might be praying by name for someone who doesn’t know Christ. It might be a quiet act of mercy that opens a door for a gospel conversation. It might be gently sharing how Jesus has met you in a struggle when a coworker confides in you. Peter urges us to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). Ask the Lord today: “Where are You sending my feet?” Then be watchful—He often turns the most routine steps into sacred appointments.

Lord Jesus, thank You that You reign and that Your gospel is still running through this world. Today, make my feet beautiful—send me, use me, and give me courage to carry Your good news wherever I go.

I hope my readers conclude right here that I have contradicted myself in the above paragraphs. It will indicate that they have been reading with their critical faculties awake. But actually there is no self-contradiction present. I have warned against harmful books and declare that there is no harm in reading in fields far removed from the standard evangelical meadows considered safe by the timid souls who think they must defend Christianity and protect the faithful from the effects of alien ideas. I'll explain.

By harmful books I do not mean those on a high intellectual level, such as the classics, poetry, history, political science and whatever falls within the category of the liberal arts. I mean cheap fiction (religious or secular), shallow religious chop suey such as is found in so many religious magazines, the world of religious trash designed to entertain the saints; I mean the self-glorifying religious adventure stories written by the brethren of the restless feet who refuse to take any responsibility or to stay in one place long enough to plant a single tree or lay a single foundation, but who always manage to spin an exciting yarn when they get back home. I mean the "digest" type of religious literature, precooked and predigested, to be ingested with a minimum of effort and in the shortest possible time. Such matter not only affords no nourishment for the soul, but its continuous use creates a parasitic mind in the reader, gives him a morbid appetite for wind and makes the reading of serious religious books not only distasteful but impossible.

I deliberately omit from my list of dangerous books the vulgar and the unclean. I take it for granted that no Christian would stain his soul with such literary putrefaction. At least I am quite sure that no one who reads this page will need to be warned about such books.

Thou hast made the Most High thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy tent. - Psalm 41:9-10

We shall understand God’s dealings with us, and get to the very throbbing heart of such promises as these in this 91st Psalm, far better if we start from the certainty that whatever it means it does not mean that, with regard to external calamities and disasters, we are going to be God’s petted children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon other people. No! no! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. If we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent Psalmist, " My feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped "; when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of the Divine providence in this world, we have to come to this belief, that the evil that is in the evil will never come near the man sheltered beneath God’s wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another, who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is their insolvency to the one the same as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the lobsters at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, " There shall no evil befall thee, neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling."

For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. It is deliverance from the evil in the evil which indicates, as no exaggeration, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to the old theorizing of Israel, but not now realized - the grand sayings of this psalm. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that Divine protection. It may still wound, but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.

And so, if any of you are finding that the psalm is not outwardly true, and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has come and beaten you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest degree impinges upon the reality and truthfulness of this great promise, "He shall cover thee with His feathers." Anything that has come through them is manifestly not an " evil." "Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?" "If God be for us, what can be against us?" Not what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it rightly calls, "sorrows" and "afflictions." These all work for our good; and protection consists, not in averting their blows, but in changing their character.