Genesis 5:18-24: a reflection

18Jared lived one hundred sixty-two years, then became the father of Enoch. 19Jared lived after he became the father of Enoch eight hundred years, and became the father of other sons and daughters. 20All of the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty-two years, then he died. 21Enoch lived sixty-five years, then became the father of Methuselah. 22After Methuselah’s birth, Enoch walked with God for three hundred years, and became the father of more sons and daughters. 23All the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years. 24Enoch walked with God, and he was not found, for God took him.

In a genealogy where the refrain is relentless, and he died, and he died, one man stands out. Of Enoch it says something different: Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. No tomb, no ordinary end. His whole life is summed up in four words, walked with God, and even his death is described not as dying but as being taken by the God he had walked with.

Notice what his biography reduces to. Not his achievements, not his years, not what he built or conquered, but this: he walked with God. Day after day, for centuries, in the ordinary continuance of his life, Enoch kept company with God, and that steady walking became the one thing worth saying about him. It is a quiet kind of greatness, a life spent in step with God.

It is worth asking what your own life would reduce to, if it had to be said in a phrase. Enoch's was not a burst of heroism but a long, steady walk, and it drew him so close to God that the boundary between his life and God's presence simply dissolved. That walk is open to you too, not in dramatic feats but in daily companionship, keeping step with God through ordinary years. Aim for the epitaph Enoch earned: he walked with God. Start walking today.

Lord, let my life reduce to what Enoch's did: he walked with God. Not dramatic feats but daily companionship with you, keeping step through ordinary years. Draw me into that steady walk, and closer to you, day by day.