Fourteen months ago, I set my friend David & his family up with free server space for their missionary website. They are soon headed to Ireland for the foreseeable future, engaging the culture of Dublin through artwork. A selection of David’s artwork is on their site, if you’re curious.
In exchange for the server space, David said he’d paint us an original work for our mantle. The theme chosen for the painting was Enoch. If you’re not familiar with Enoch, well, we don’t know a lot about him, but what we do know staggers my imagination:
Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 24Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Genesis 5:22-24, ESV
The New Testament Epistle of Jude — which happens to be by far my favorite book of the Bible, and not just because it’s a quick read! — expands on Enoch by revealing that he was a prophet who, something like 5,000 years ago, preached the Second Coming of Christ and His judgment upon false teachers:
It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” Jude 14-15, ESV
That prophesy is almost verbatim from an apocryphal work known as 1 Enoch, which is very interesting reading in and of itself, especially if you have any interest at all in angels, the Flood, or just what the heck was going on with man during the time of Genesis 6. For better or worse, what is written in 1 Enoch can’t be taken as absolute truth as it is not an inspired work — but that doesn’t mean it is all blatantly false, and Jude at least confirms Enoch’s prophecy as recorded in 1 Enoch as being valid.
Suffice it to say, I find Enoch to be quite the historical figure, and I’m happy to have hanging over our mantle the David Baker original Enoch Walked with God and Was Not.
I rarely ever use it, but the pictures are present on my Flickr Photostream.
What do you think of the painting? I’d love to hear others’ interpretations of it. It’s already late or I’d continue writing and share my thoughts, but I may give myself a few days’ of looking at it before doing something like that.
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It looks like either a.) a giant unborn child hovering in the sky over the road, or b.) experimenting with bungee-jumping in a Ziploc.
I would feel uncomfortable as a passenger on that road.
I like it.
David Baker: One should hope so.
We’ve gotten mixed reactions over it; close to a dozen members members of our family have seen it, plus other friends. Some like it, some don’t, but it doesn’t matter. I really do like it.
It reminds me of the Star Child seen at the end of 2001: A Space Oddysey, but it’s also a constant reminder that no one will ever come unto the Father unless he is first born again. And for Enoch, well, that new birth happened en route.
Dad commented that seeing the painting here, it wasn’t too apparent that it was a hand with fingers between Enoch’s head & legs; instead, it looked like a microphone with the umbilical cord acting as its cord. It apparently looks much more like a hand when viewing it in person.
mom didn’t quite like it. she said that it was odd because it looked like a man and not a baby.