Enoch, pleased and pleasing

Genesis 5:24

Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Hebrews 11:5

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God

There is a steadiness in each day. Every morning I wake, in unity with the sun, its movement mine. Every evening I sleep, with the moon now rising. Each day, I must move in the patterns of my life, consuming food and water, breathing the breath of the winds, watching the flow of the seasons, small moments and large moments existing together. These moments slide forward, always going outward, never returning back, each moment escaping from me into its beyond, a day gone. It moves forward, forward, forward, pressing gently but completely.

I walk. The steadiness of each day is like a step, forward, forward, a slow and even rhythm with its own risings and fallings, sometimes a stone, a bush, or perhaps an animal may change the pattern of my stepping, but it still moves forward and continues, ever righting itself, returning to itself. To walk is to live in rhythm, to imitate the outside world in the greater rhythm, unregulated, of the sun and moon and stars, that great course which moves itself and never stops.

O Lord, return me to these things, my walk, its steadiness, our rhythm. See the world and know me in your love. I am from Adam, from his line, a son of the receiver of the promise, a son of the father of violence, the bringer of confusion, though we all stood with him in it. I have in my flesh chaos. When Adam chose, I chose, we chose, and when he threw off the bonds of created order, we threw them off too, and the chaos and confusion was among us and in us, for to reject order is to make order of our own, and when all make order, there is none. I know this confusion, as I look and see it enacted on this earth, in the desiring of a mastery of one's own, to possess and demand and rule over those seen, to take and own, to order the universe by one's own authority. This is the man twisted inward, the man rejecting what he was made for but not escaping it. In this we create a self-parody, a man in imitation of man, and the submission we were meant for is what we demand, we a god in our own world, rejecting the knowledge of him to fashion a god, this act is to be a god, and though such things are not always externalized in the form of gold or silver or wood, yet no one escapes it. It is our choice in our father, from God to god.

O Lord, this also is in me.

To walk is a steadiness, an order. The world was made for order, for God himself is ordered, the divine self agreeing amongst itself that created day when he created. God spoke to himself, ordered himself, creating by the pattern of his wisdom, executed by the executer at the command of the commander by the power of his power. Such are the mysteries of God, but who can the sun ruling the day and the moon ruling the night? There is an order to this world, and though the world now shudders with the breaking of it (the earth shaking, the violence of the rain and hail, the coldness of the night and the heat of the day, these all signs of the disorder that fights against the world), God made it and it was so, the fish filling the sea, the birds the air, the beasts the earth, all according to the command of the Lord, with his image set over them all, the divine image placed in man, to rule over them all. To rule is not to possess. Only a creator can possess.

O Lord, to walk is a steadiness, a return to your order, the order we lost when in our flesh we chose the chaos. To choose for myself is to make my own world, but this world is not mine to make. I have no authority over it, having not created it, and thus I can only manipulate, destroy, exercise a given power over it, to make it groan under me, to make it cry out to its creator, but never newness, never mastery (the only mastery is creation). O Lord, in my heart there is this desire, this desire to reign, to have power, to rule and smash and force unto submission. Order meets order in this new dying world, two created worlds (created only in the minds of their creators) which cannot co-exist, occupying as they do the same position. This is the world, a world of violence and power, of the clash of orders, of might exercising itself, a world of chaos when the hearts of men create for themselves the worlds that cannot exist and will not exist, these forced outward into each other, and then blood, murder, death. Death is this world, the death man brings with him everywhere, and the death you brought to it, O Lord, that man would know that this creation at least will not submit to him.

Groan, O Earth, groan! Chaos was not your lot! What is twisted will naturally long to be untwisted, though it be destroyed in the untwisting. The earth, being created purposefully, will never fit itself until that purpose is restored. There is much beauty that remains here, but we who carry the heritage of the promise know that all of it is but an echo, a dim reflection, an image glimpsed by the light of the stars, a poor and pale imitation of that beauty of a world well-ordered, the riot of a thousand, million created lives together under obedience to one will, a pleasing order that cannot be known or seen, but which the forest, the night-sky, the mountains shadow out for us, a glory unglimpsed, lost but not forever, to be regained, for do you think God would give up such glory only to give realm for man to exercise his lusts and desires upon his creation for a short time? No, the very groans of creation show that this is brief, this is temporary, the promises speak of change, newness, a time of renewal, when all order will be returned to us, and we will see the God of order in his order, a glory our eyes were made for, and which they themselves in the matter of their creation (dust, dust, dust) also groan for.

Lord, I believe. I am pleased in you and in your promises. They will come. O Lord, I long for it! But I will wait, wait, wait, as the sun and moon and stars do, walking also as they do, waiting in movement.

I walk then, in the steadiness of my days, awaiting the one who will come, and resubmitting my rebellious heart to the created order once imposed. I cannot discipline it, I cannot control it, but the promise offers the recreation of it, and so in the anticipation (how long, O Lord?) a steadiness returns. There is a pleasing sense of his knowledge of me, that as I walk he too walks, my steadiness from him. His order becomes my order and I am pleased, recovering somewhat of the joy that once sang across creation, the joy of each piece in its place, exulting in the fullness of its purpose, a joy I know will be seen in fullness when the world is restored according to the promises of God, when my heart itself is not just taken in hand but remade. Joy in being fitted is joy in the fulfillment of purpose, a purpose made for that which possesses it, a created thing which can possess. Joy is what my soul desires, what it is promised, but a promise is to be possessed as a hope, not the thing in itself. And so I wait, and walk, and listen to him, pleased and pleasing in the grace of the promise, a man waiting the recovery of lost things, knowing not the way of it, but that the way is promised.

The days will continue until they cease. Then the day will begin.