a closer walk

a closer walk...

"The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I am contemplating this phrase "a long obedience in the same direction". Desiring a closer walk with Him, I look back on my own walk, gazing down the path from which I have just come. It isn't an easy walk. It is long and often arduous. Sometimes it is boring and I forget what I am doing. Often I have wandered off, not unlike the Prodigal Son, to see what lies beyond the borders of my faith. To see if it is easier.  

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years.

Genesis 5:21-23

What made Enoch walk with God faithfully? He was 65 years old. He had just had a son. Was Methuselah that bad of a kid? Did he have health problems that caused Enoch to cry out to the Almighty? Or was it as simple as realizing the responsibility of raising a child in the faith?

 This is the account of Noah and his family.

   Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD

Genesis 6:8-10

We all know what Noah did. Built a boat in a land with no rain. Humiliating himself day after day. But He walked with God so faithfully that it seems he knew nothing else but to obey, leaving the outcome in the hands of his Master.

“Go,” the LORD said to me, “and lead the people on their way, so that they may enter and possess the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.”

 And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

Deuteronomy 10:11-13

I have already had a long obedience in the same direction. I have been following God for 30 years. But the path still lies before me. I got caught up looking at stuff around me, nuts and berries and things. Stopped beacause the path just seemed so dang long. Thought I saw something worthwhile in the bushes. Nope. Nothing of value there.

Newton's First Law

Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.

Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed

Consequently, a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Unless acted upon. Moved.

My daughters have moved me, pressed me into action. As I was off in the bushes looking for that squirrel I thought I saw, taking a break from sheer doldrums, near the path, but not quite on it, my daughters in ways both different and eerily in tune sharply reminded me that they await their spiritual training.

My inaction, my rest from the long obedience affects not only me.