“Come, neighbor Christian, since there is none but us two here, tell me now further, what the things are, and how to be enjoyed, whither we are going.”

—John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

 

I love walking. I especially love walking with a close friend; it’s one of life’s sweetest and (gratefully) most affordable pleasures. Walking is good.

Often, I start out early on winter mornings and head down the dirt path that takes me to a trail behind the neighborhood, past the playground, into a world you can’t experience driving 55 mph. Sometimes, I walk in the fog or drizzle. And in the fall, when evenings after sunsets are still warm, and all the green has turned brown and crackles under my shoes, and I can hear the loud hissing of crickets somewhere in the scrub oak and wild mustard. I love to walk.

Walking side by side with someone is an encounter far more personal than just reading their Facebook page or seeing what they select to post on Instagram. As much as we enjoy social media, you can’t really see the joy or sadness on their face; you can’t really hug a person, or share their tears. But when you walk with someone, you expose parts of who you are that a photograph—even a conversation on the phone—may conceal. It implies intimacy.

That is why I love the way the Bible speaks of some having “walked with God.” Enoch walked with God, and so did Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Job. And like Adam in the garden, God is calling to us, “Where are you?” To all who will hear His voice, the invitation stands: “Come walk with Me.” How amazing we can know God with such intimacy—what a privilege.

Walking with someone implies that we have their presence with us. Emmanuel means “God with us,” right? Not just that we acknowledge Him occasionally, but that we live in the awareness that He is aware of us. He is “the unseen Guest at every meal, the silent Listener to every conversation.”

That kind of awareness leads to accountability in our lives. It develops integrity in public and private. D.L. Moody is quoted to have said, “Character is what you are in the dark.” When no one is looking or listening, God is. That shouldn’t disturb me; instead it motivates me.

We don’t run with God; we walk . . . rhythmically, with regularity. Walking is also so doable! It doesn’t carry the drama of a race or sprint; nor is it characterized by fits and starts. It’s day in and day out. Sometimes we think that walking with God means the skies will always part and we will hear voices from heaven. Now, I won’t deny the miraculous; I believe God can and does do miracles that defy the laws of nature. Realistically, is that what we should expect? God breaking the natural laws right and left? And if that is the case for some, but not for us, what about the majority of our lives: daily chores, driving to work, folding laundry, paying bills . . . you know, the boring but necessary routines of life. Is God present in the mundane as well as the miraculous? The answer is yes! God walks with us in the ordinariness of life and everything we do can be done as an act of worship. Thank God, or else ninety-nine percent of the time we’d be on our own . . . but we are not.

He is there in the line with me at the DMV. God so near at hand, so available, approachable. Quietly, unpretentiously, challenging me, correcting me, He is there. Now the question is, do I realize His presence? For “in Him we live and move and have our being.”

Come walk with God. Jeremiah the prophet urges us to “stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).

But then, he sadly adds this: “But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.'”

Will you?