The Beautiful Feet of Galveston

On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger stepped onto the balcony of Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas, and read aloud General Order No. 3. His voice carried words that two hundred fifty thousand enslaved men, women, and children had been legally entitled to hear for two and a half years: "All slaves are free."

The Emancipation Proclamation had been signed in January 1863. But in the remote corners of Texas, slaveholders had suppressed the news. Freedom existed on paper in Washington, yet bondage persisted in practice on the plantations. Liberation required a messenger.

When Granger's words reached the streets, the response was immediate and uncontainable. People wept. People shouted. People dropped their tools and walked off fields they would never work as property again. The news spread from household to household, plantation to plantation, carried by beautiful feet running down dusty Texas roads. What had been true became real — not because the reality changed, but because the proclamation finally arrived.

Isaiah saw a similar scene on the hills surrounding Jerusalem. A messenger races toward the city with news the exiles had ached to hear: "Your God reigns!" The watchmen see him coming and burst into song together. Salvation was not a future hope — it was an accomplished fact that needed announcing.

The gospel works the same way. What the Almighty has already accomplished in Christ still needs messengers willing to run.