Walking

Although I don’t often walk great distances, walking has been in my blood ever since childhood (rather like listening to the radio; maybe I’ll do a blog entry on that sometime). It sometimes astonishes me even now the distance I used to walk (or run) to get from home to primary school and back twice a day when I was little more than an infant. Many a time, on leisure days, I would wander off by myself, going all over Guernsey, my island home. It was quite safe and my parents had no fears for me.

Mum would take me walking quite often, especially on pleasant summer days. It was quite an achievement for her. Back in the 1940’s she had fallen victim to meningitis. The treatment in those days was as drastic as “kill or cure” and left her permanently deaf. As we tend to balance by using our hearing, Mum had to learn to walk all over again. She was a capable, even if a bit slow and unsteady, walker, with a very simple view of what made a good walk: you tried to return by a different way from your outward one. This has become a habit with me, too. Where possible I make my walks circular rather than retrace my steps. Like Mum I keep up a fairly slow pace – most people overtake me – and as with Mum my sense of balance is not great now.

Walking, they say, is good for you. In my view this isn’t uniformly the case. Sometimes my thoughts are positive, sometimes dark and brooding. But there is a sense of achievement, a sense of physical well-being and for me a sense of keeping in touch with my roots. Sometimes – as I have mentioned before on this blog – I am blessed by really uplifting God-incidences en route.

The Bible often describes the way of life of a man or woman as their “walk”. The first and maybe the most striking mention of this is in Genesis 5:21-24 -

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Genesis 5:21-24 ESV

To me this is a most beautiful picture of a man’s close friendship with the living God. Enoch didn’t just “walk before” God, conscious of having God close behind him as an observer and judge who would correct him if he stepped out of line. He didn’t just “walk after” God, taking God for a model and imitating His ways as far as man can imitate God. Enoch “walked with” God, a sign of confident (but in no way over-confident), close fellowship. Enoch made sure to live in such a way that he had no need to be scared of God or hide away. And this relationship took on a life of its own. Physical death made no difference to it. Once Enoch’s time on earth had passed, he was simply whisked away into the presence of God – to continue that walk on a higher plane.

He walks with God who speaks to God in prayer,

And daily brings to Him his daily care;

Possessing inward peace, he truly knows

A heart's refreshment and a soul's repose.

He walks with God who, as he onward moves,

Follows the footsteps of the Lord he loves,

And keeping Him forever in his view,

His Saviour sees and his example too.

He walks with God who turns his face to Heaven,

And keeps the blest commands by Jesus given;

His life upright, his end untroubled peace,

Whom God will crown when all his labours cease.

Dorothy Ann Thrupp, 1779-1847

Biblical Floods

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, visited a farm on the Somerset Levels to witness the appalling floods at first hand. “It’s a biblical scene,” he commented. “The scale of it here in Somerset is immense when you think of how many square miles are under water.”

“Biblical” in this context means enormous in size and scope. People may speak of a biblical scene when describing the aftermath of a massacre, or the widespread devastation that follows in the wake of a natural catastrophe.

It is intriguing for a Christian to hear the word “biblical” used in this way. After all, in today’s culture the Bible is rarely taken as a point of reference. Indeed the Bible Society conducted a survey recently which revealed widespread ignorance of what the Bible says about even basic subjects of religious knowledge.

Anyway, for Mr Cameron the floods presented a biblical scene to the eye. Doubtless he was thinking of the great Flood in the book of Genesis, the one where Noah fashioned his famous ark. Those who know the story will remember that he was delivered, along with seven of his relatives, and specimens of every creature liable to fall victim to flooding, from the total destruction of life on earth.

In recent centuries there has been a prevailing view that the story of Noah’s ark was just a pleasant fable. Even though I have a high view of the Bible, I was for many years under the influence of these ideas. Then as a young adult I was involved in correspondence with a keen creationist. He introduced me to “The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications”, a 1961 work by young earth creationists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris. The “scientific implications” were that you could not take the biblical record seriously and accept an evolutionary point of view at the same time.

I must admit that I was rather doubtful about the book’s arguments at the time. Yet the biblical creationist movement has come a long way since then in its manner of presenting its case. Along with that development, there is now a wider understanding about how catastrophes on an enormous scale (a biblical scale, even!) have happened during the history of the earth, producing tremendous changes in a very short space of time.

But above all, using the word “biblical” to describe the Somerset Levels floods is testimony to the helplessness of man, for all his knowledge, in the face of the forces of nature and of God. In trying to play God, the human race may well have unleashed a power beyond its control. The late Baroness Thatcher, in an address to the Royal Society in 1988, expressed the concern that “we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself”.

Who knows where it will end? But for the one who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ, the watchword is not to look downcast, but to look up!

"And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:25-28 ESV).