“After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived another 300 years in close fellowship with God, and he had other sons and daughters…He enjoyed a close relationship with God throughout his life. Then suddenly, he disappeared because God took him.”
Genesis 5:22-24
When words like these jump out of a boring genealogy, we better pay attention! It was in the third generation after Adam, that people began to worship God by name. And four generations after that, we hear these sweet details about Enoch, he enjoyed a close relationship with God throughout his life. That life included 300 years of demonstrating to Methuselah and his other children, a God who desires to be close.
Likewise, others in this genealogy must have been faithful to pass on stories of their God, because at the end of it we read of Enoch’s great-grandson, Noah. He was also described as a man who enjoyed a close relationship with God. (Gen. 6:9) Even though Noah was born over 1,000 years after Adam, the stories of walking with God had crossed those nine generations.
God makes sure there are individuals in every generation who will pass the relationship message on to their descendants. In fact, it was close to Noah’s lifetime when Abraham was born, the man God later called to be the father of Israel. Through that nation came Jesus, our ultimate connection to God. What a beautiful thread of relationship God has spun through the generations, and now we are entrusted to keep it spinning through ours!
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