Day One - January 5
Daily Reading: Gen 5:15-6:22; Mat 2:13-23
Memory Verse: Gen. 5:24 “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him”
Sometimes my wife and I will take walks together. It’s one
of my favorite times—especially in the Spring. Sometimes we will comment on
what we see around us: a wildflower poking up through the rocks, a squirrel
scurrying up the tree, a budding dogwood. Other times, we walk and say nothing.
But there is unspoken communication, an unspoken reality: “I’m not alone.”
Enoch walked with God. He didn’t just know about God. He didn’t
just talk to God now and then. He saw life as a journey with God. The Bible
doesn’t say much more about this man. But that’s a great testimony by itself. He
lived 365 years—one year for every day of the year, a long, full life! Then
from what we can see in this verse, Enoch simply disappeared. He walked so
close with God that at some point God opened a doorway from this sphere into
the eternal reality and Enoch just walked right in.
During these next 21 days, I challenge you to simply ‘walk
with God.’ How would your prayers change if you saw yourself walking with God?
Maybe try that now and then. Bundle up and take a walk, in the morning
preferably. If not, try it on your lunch hour or in the evening. Talk to God
about everything: what you’re looking at, your thanks, your worries, your
fears. If not a literal walk, take a walk through the garden of your heart with
Jesus and talk with Him about what you see: the weeds of unforgiveness, the
rocks of gratitude, the briars of worry and care. Soon you’ll experience the
truth: “I’m not alone. God is with me.”
Prayer: Father, thank
you that You are the kind of God who does not remain at a distance. You want to
walk with us. I want to desire that more and to experience You in the everyday
rhythms of life. Help me to draw near to You through Your Son, Jesus and the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
For further study: Did
people really live this long and if so, why?
Answer: The Bible
should be taken literally unless there is a good reason to believe it is
figurative language. I believe they really lived this long during this era.
After the flood, life spans decreased.
Why did God begin to shorten the lifespan? First, because of
mercy. In Gen. 6:3, we read, “Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[b] humans
forever, for they are mortal[c]; their
days will be a hundred and twenty years.” In mercy, God shortened the
lifespans. How is that merciful you say? Some things don’t get better with age.
Imagine a jar of honey that gets thicker and thicker until it is hard and
eventually rancid. Get the idea? Imagine a cranky old man who continues to get
crankier by the day. Let him live 600 years and what do you have? It’s not
pretty!
Secondly, the lifespans seem linked to life
before the flood. Whatever catastrophic events that may have been connected
with the flood may have changed the earth’s atmosphere in such a way that life
on earth was altered. It may have been a change in ultraviolet rays or
something like that. The Bible doesn’t give us much in the way of scientific
detail so we should be careful not to give in to fables and conjecture here.
But something changed and it was God’s choice.
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