We read in Genesis 5:22-24 that Enoch "walked faithfully with God." The translations are pretty clear on the walking part; sometimes they say "habitually" or "in fellowship" or "faithfully," but it's pretty clear Enoch walked with God.
What do we mean when we say that someone walks with God?
On journeys, it used to be common to tell the departing, "Go with God." We have a tradition of believing that God watches over our travels. But in that sense, I get the feeling we mean more, "Travel under God's protection, so that nothing bad will happen to you, the person I care about," than, "Take a trip with God at your side."
If we say that someone walks with God, we tend to mean that they're somehow in touch with the divine, that they have something holy about them. After all, if you're walking with someone, you're likely talking with them too, so walking with God goes hand in hand with some sort of divine connection like talking to God, or at least hearing God. Or perhaps we mean that God is walking with this person, showing them the way. That's a pretty decent approximation of "let God guide your way." And then there's the whole "when you only saw one set of footprints," thing.
But what if we were to take this to the bottom? What if we believed that everyone was walking with God, and "walking with God," is just noticing you're doing it?
Try it some time. Go out on a walk with God. Maybe you talk, maybe you just listen, maybe you find a path because God decided to walk that direction. Maybe walking with God is just the realization that God is all around us, that every walk we take is with God, in ourselves, in whomever we're walking with, in the world around us.
We're told that Enoch walked with God after his son Methuselah was born, not before. It's almost as if, and I'm not saying this is the case, but Enoch learned to walk faithfully with God because his son was born. What more potent expression of the divine in our lives than the birth of a child?
So Enoch walked with God for 300 years, faithfully, and though we're not told this, I imagine that walking with God is probably not the easiest thing to do. It requires a bit of faith and a bit of chutzpah, and clearly Enoch had both. And when he finally got to the end, he walked off with God to someplace else and was gone. That must have been the hardest part of the walk, to leave behind his sons and daughters and family, to leave behind the toils of this world, for though toils they might be they are still the toils with which he was familiar, and to walk off and not be seen again. But Enoch walked faithfully with God and so he didn't turn aside at this last hurdle.
And I'd like to think that when he finally got to the end of the journey, God invited him in for some wine and pastry and a chat about what they'd seen and heard and experienced, the way a good friend might after a long walk.
May it be so for all of us.
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