WALKING

Nathan Attwood

Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

"If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin." 1 John 1:7.

Are you a walker? When I was younger, I never thought of walking as exercise. Walking was how I got to the place where I would exercise. Things change! 

Still, throughout my life, I've been a walker. My father loved to take walks, and when I was little, we would sometimes walk together. My grandmother would take walks before meals. A walk at the nature preserve was part of every Thanksgiving and a walk on the beach was part of every summer visit. For her, it was about health and vitality. For me, a walk was a time to talk and connect. Conversations during walks are great.

My father has always made walking a primary way of praying. Often, when I would talk to him about something I was wrestling with, he would say, "It sounds like you need to go take a walk with the Lord and see what he says about it." Prayer can and mostly is something we all do sitting or kneeling, but my father always practiced prayer on the move.

Walking in the Bible is both a literal action and also a metaphor. "Walking with the Lord" is a way to describe sharing life with God. It's also a way of talking about sharing life with God that envisions a journey, a journey in which we and God stand together, headed in a certain direction with a shared goal, side-by-side rather than face-to-face. Walking together is a way of being together that denotes open sharing heart-to-heart. Walking together is a way of conversing that comes from a life of companionship.

The disciples, of course, walked with Jesus in a very literal way. Their missionary journeys criss-crossed the length of their nation. Jesus invited others to come along in the journey, until the Gospels, especially Luke, describe discipleship as joining a band of followers who formed a peripatetic community, almost like the band of runners following Forrest Gump.

When the Old Testament prophet, Micah, describes what God wants from us, he says, "He has told you O mortal what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)." We sometimes think God wants big effort from us. Micah seems to say that God wants us to offer big deeds of love to other people. What he wants with us is someone to be his walking partner.

I've been teaching an online Bible study through Genesis recently on Tuesday mornings at 8am on my church's Facebook page. One of the things I have noticed is that the early chapters have few characters and we learn little about what is good about the good guys or bad about the bad guys. However, there are a number of characters that do the kinds of things people think make for greatness, tough guys like Lamech, builders like Nimrod, people seemingly partly descended from the gods like the Nephilim. 

The surrounding nations are impressed with these kinds of people. Not God. God made Adam to walk with him in the garden. Who are the heroes of Genesis? The closest thing to a hero in the early part of the book is a guy named Enoch, who "walked with God, and, "he was not, for God took him." That's pretty mysterious stuff. But it's pretty clear, too, that walking with God is the primary thing God made people for and when someone actually does it God really wants us to know God is pleased with that person. 

The next part of my study in Genesis is about to take me to the big long story of Abraham and his family. Abraham is pretty flawed in a lot of ways. And yet, God chooses Abraham among all the people of the earth to carry the promise and to raise up a family to bless all the world. Why? Because when God finds Abraham in Haran, he calls him to spend the rest of his life walking a journey through strange lands in simple trust of God's promise. Abraham agrees to pick up his family and to give his life to walking with God. 

I don't have a walking partner. I take my walks alone, or with a book, or talking on the phone. Perhaps more of my walks should be prayer walks. Maybe, more than anything else, that would be what God would want. Maybe that's why God made me. To walk with him. Maybe that's why he made us all. 

This Thanksgiving, when everyone is stuffed to the gills after dinner, perhaps someone in your family might ask, "Who wants to join me for a walk?" It's an invitation for more than exercise. It's an invitation to connect. God offers that invitation every day. He measures greatness by the answer we give to his summons. Will you use this day to walk with God?