The Inward Life the Lasting Memorial

"And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."—Gen. 5:23,24.

It has been said that great men have the shortest biographies (Think of M'Cheyne, Brainerd, etc.). This is also true for Enoch. He was arguably the greatest Antediluvian man of the book of Genesis. Yet his life was the shortest! (Gen. 5) Why was he given this honor? Why was he blessed, and taken so soon? It is because his life was more inward, and therefore, hidden. The best part about Enoch was the very part others did not see. The hidden life. The spirit, the heart, the soul. His life was hidden with God. It was too inward to make any great impressions on this world. His walk was holy, and therefore it was deemed a strange walk. To men around him, no doubt, his life was a thing to be forgotten. Yet nothing else has been remembered from that time. It surely had wars and rumors of wars, buying’s and selling’s, victories and losses, advancements and failures, tyrants, and kings? Yet nothing remains. But Enoch’s testimony is alive today.

Here we learn a deep and eternal lesson. Walking with God is the only thing worthy of remembering. Your time to exit is fast approaching, as is mine. What will you be remembered for? Will it be your career? Your education? Your family? Your outward success? Surely there were many more successful men and women in Enoch's day. Who had everything you do, and more. But where’s their memorial? They are gone, and they have none. Their memory is covered over by the dust of history and sand of time. But if you walk with God;

if your life is “hid with Christ in God”,

if nothing else matters in this perishing, fleeting world but Christ;

then something lasting has begun.

Something eternal has entered your soul. Then in some small way, you are like this man. May your children and grandchildren say of you, "For he walked with God, and God took him."

The inward Life is the lasting memorial.