Why I Walk
May 7, 2010
by Rev. Mitch HEscox
Over the past few months as I traveled throughout the United States, I told the story of a five-year-old Tanzania girl who has to walk twelve miles each day for water. She walks to hopefully avoid being abused as many other women and girls have been. She walks fetching water because deforestation, changing climate, and other forms of environmental degradation have destroyed her local watershed. She walks for life and so do I.
The Creation Care Walk is a walk for life, a walk discerned from God to draw attention to the millions of God’s children who are impacted each day by our lack of care for God’s creation. I take very seriously the call to care for the least of these. Whether it is the coal miners and their families whose streams are polluted from mountaintop removal run-off, the Haitians whose nation’s earthquake devastation was exacerbated through deforestation, the child in Africa who is malnourished because of decades of drought, the family in Peru who is impacted by malaria creep in Peru, or the flooded villages of Tuvalu and Bangladesh, our poor creation care intensifies their plight. This walk is truly about life.
I walk to tell the stories of Jesus, my risen Lord, who came to offer the abundant life and proclaim God’s Kingdom is at hand. My Risen Lord first appeared in a garden and was thought to be a gardener. That wasn’t a mistake, but a call to remember that the whole earth belongs to the Lord and that all things were created through Him and for Him. I walk following my Risen Lord’s footsteps and know by following Christ as His disciples, we can change the world through Him, thereby offering real life and hope.
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