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Missing Persons

Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him.  Genesis 5:24

I love this little verse!  I find myself musing upon it. We know that he was the son of an evil age.  Perhaps there were those who sought his life.  If that were the case, they were destined to frustration.  We are told that he could not be found, for God took him.

Over the last twenty-five years or so I have been meeting for breakfast with a group of older, now mostly Berean men.  During that time, I have noted that the subjects that draw our conversation have morphed.  Not much time consumed in discussion of career moves.  Actually, there is not a lot of talk about women either.  I think that our former confidence in that area has substantially dissolved. Pretty much all of the conversation now has mostly to do with four areas:  Politics; investments; medical issues, and Theology.  To my irritation the men are not always in complete agreement with me in the area of politics.  I take satisfaction in knowing that they are all younger than I am, and so have time to refine their thoughts and bring them more nearly into alignment with my own. In the area of investments, my relative silence derives from my relative lack of luster.  On the upside, if I needed a loan, these guys could be my bank.

I am both amused and frightened related to the group fixation on the results from our most recent medical exams. We are old men!  The trends are not positive!

What does please me greatly is the fact that I find the men to be theologically astute.  I like listening to them - though some exhibit the temerity to disagree with me in some minor ways, I do not detect in them an attitude of unmovable rigidity.  They are all ready to amend their beliefs, I think, should that be required in order to conform them more completely to the WORD. They are good men.  I find them active in their desire to know God more deeply and purely.

Over the years, we have suffered losses.  In those instances, I must say that much sorrow attended their departures.  A Tuesday morning came and went, and they were not in their places. Still there was this sense of “promotion”.  Our friends had moved on!  And yet they had come to be so much like the Lord, that in their absence what did, almost palpably, remain of them was their likeness to Christ.

George Moore

Elder Emeritus