Ran around all morning getting things ready for a trip to Florida this weekend. My oldest sister-in-law and her daughter and my dearest friend and I are driving down to New Smyrna Beach on Saturday to visit my cousin and enjoy the beach for a few days. Beautiful area but is said to be the most dangerous beach in the United States for shark bites. Course I never go far enough in the ocean except to let the waves touch my toes. Read up on New Smyrna and it says if your not bitten by a shark there is one within 8 feet at all times. He’ll have to crawl up the beach to bite me!

My grandchildren got me waist deep in the ocean several years ago at Hilton Head for a family photo. I was sweating bullets waiting for the shark teeth to sink in and my granddaughter pinches me on the butt and yells, “Shark.” Man I boogied it back to the beach in two seconds while the kids laughed their heads off. Almost caused a tsunami. I’m proud and happy they enjoy the ocean and swim around like it’s a big pool. I hope they always feel free and safe in the ocean but I saw that cursed movie and it just ruined the ocean for me. Just give me a chair and a few waves to wash my toes of sand and I’m content. Just walking down the beach thrills me. And the magnificent sunsets!

I was thinking about walking this afternoon and how we walk with Jesus through our lives as Christians. Walking now is just an activity that some of us do for exercise. When Jesus walked it was a mode of transportation. When I was a child I walked to school, to town, to the city library, to friends’ houses. The average person walks about two miles a day. Jesus is said to have walked 15,000 miles during his lifetime. I read somewhere that he was a “persistent pedestrian.”

In Jesus’s walks, walking was not just about the destination he was walking towards. Life happened during his journeys. Jesus healed the sick and diseased, cared for the poor, preached of the goodness of God. He went to weddings and got involved in people’s lives where ever he went bringing peace and kindness and the joy of God’s words to the crowds that gathered around him.

Jesus wants us to walk with him every day, taking each day as it comes, trusting in God to provide tomorrow. Walking with God means keeping him at the center of each day, believing in his guidance for every aspect of our lives. Deuteronomy 5:32-33 says, “So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”

We make a conscious decision to walk as God commands us. Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it.” When we follow Jesus as we walk through life we’re welcomed by his unconditional love and faithfulness. The path we walk with God ultimately leads to eternal life and the destination of heaven.

“Those that walk with God always reach their destination.” — Henry Ford