Walk with me?

One of my favorite things to do is to walk around my yard checking out each and every plant there. This is not only one of my favorite things to do. It is also my husband’s.

“Let’s talk a walk. Check out the plants and see how things are,” he might say. We inspect everything we’ve planted ourselves, from the azaleas near the bird feeders to the tulip tree as high as my knee to the dogwoods planted long before we moved in.

We look at what is thriving. We talk about what is not. We are newbies to this home, so we’ve rarely had to come up with a plan for the not thriving plants, but we would if we noticed we needed to.

I don’t know what it is about the walk around our small, teeny, tiny corner of planet earth that delights us so, as my husband loves the thrill of our walk as much as I do. Is it the walking together? the talking? the inspecting? the stillness of being together, fully present in the moment? I’m not quite sure. Perhaps, it is everything, not one thing.

However, what it always reminds me of is walking in the Garden with the Father, before sin entered and cluttered our world. The Bible doesn’t really say Adam specifically walked with Him. It simply says that God was walking in the Garden when He discovered their sin. However, I imagine that Adam and Eve walked with God.

What if slowing down to walk and talk about what we see or don’t see was the way to be intimate with Him?

What if He and Adam talked about how the plants were growing, what pruning needed to be done, and if things needed moving?

What if they talked about caring for the animals growing there?

What if this one thing was the way He taught so many more things?

What if there was freedom to be cherished and to cherish?

And so, we see throughout the rest of the Bible from beginning to end, men and women walking with God. Even, it seems, if He was not physically present there, men and women walked with Him. Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, David, Jesus, men and women with Jesus, Paul, John, and Peter, just to name a few.

In the original Garden, in Eden, God asks, “Where are you?” One seemingly small thing, eating a piece of fruit, prevented them from walking with Him in the Garden again.

How many times had God said to Adam and Eve, “Walk with me?” But this time was different. The Bible does not say if Adam ever walked with God again, but he could have. And even though no more walking is credited to him, it certainly did not prevent others from walking with Him in the future.

On this side of Jesus, we get to walk with God every day! He cries to us, “Walk with me? Follow me?” Our response is really where our discipleship begins – on a walk with Him. It is also how soul care begins.

Are you walking with God? Will you walk with Him? What does walking with Him look like to you?

There is really no pursuing without some form of movement. And walking? it is the easiest, perhaps most perfect movement for anyone. Listen. He is calling, “Walk with me?”

So begins our adventure with Him.