Walked with God - Devotion for 9/29/08

Walked with God – Devotion for 9/29/08

Recently I’ve been leading a Bible Study on the book of Genesis, and like many books of the Bible, there are parts that can sort of lull us to just skip right over some stuff. For example, Genesis 5 is basically a chapter that simply gives us part of the family tree from Adam to Noah, and through out the chapter it tells us the name of someone, who they fathered, and how long they lived. Each verse seems to be following a formula, and so it would be easy to just skip over a bunch of it (take a look for yourself – other than the remarkable ages which leads to a whole host of other questions, you’ll see what I mean). However, at verse 21 we get to a dude with the delightful name Enoch (why did my parents choose Adam instead of that!). In verse 22 we find out Enoch because the father of Methuselah (as in “old as Methuselah”), but then we learn some actually quite remarkable about Enoch: “Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters.”(Emphasis added) Even more stunning is that in verse 24 we learn that not only did Enoch walk with God, but he also never died: “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”

What does it mean to be defined as one who “walked with God?” We really don’t know anything else about Enoch, but I would love to know what that means. I think we all believe that God walks with us, as in the well known poem “Footprints.” But what does it mean to walk with God?

The family and I went walking the dogs on Saturday. We have 2 completely different dogs. Riley is an 8 year old Golden Retriever; Oscar is a 1 year old lab mix. Oscar is so excited about the whole world when we walk that we constantly have to pull him back on the leash. Meanwhile, Riley is completely content walking right by my side. In fact, I don’t think that I’d even need to have Riley on a leash, because he is so obedient most of the time (yes – this is the same dog that knocked me unconscious once, but that’s a different story!). In the sense of the dogs, I feel like we are walking with Oscar, because as he runs from one side to the next, sniffing anything and everything, you can tell he barely recognizes we are there. On the other hand, I feel like Riley is walking with us, because he strides along happily right there with us the whole time. Now I take joy in both dogs, but there is something special about a dog that chooses to walk with me while I walk with him.

I hope on my tombstone one day it will read “Adam walked with God.” I want to walk each day enjoying His presence, knowing He is always there with me as I am with Him. That may mean I have to walk with Him to places I don’t want to go, I may have to walk further than I want to walk, and I may have to rest with Him when I want to keep going – but through it all, I want to be one who “walked with God.” He’s strolling – care to join Him?