WALK WITH ME, LORD. WALK WITH ME. “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.” Joshua 4 A Commentary on the Digging for Dignity Legacy Project.
WALK WITH ME, LORD. WALK WITH ME.
“I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.”
Joshua 4
A Commentary on the Digging for Dignity Legacy Project.
Historic People’s Memorial Burial Park • Haltom City, Texas
“I want Jesus to walk with me…”
There are songs that entertain.
There are songs that inspire.
And then there are songs that survive.
“I Want Jesus to Walk With Me” is one of those songs.
Before it was written upon paper,
it was written upon weary hearts.
Before it was sung in sanctuaries,
it was whispered beneath open skies.
Before it became a hymn,
it became a prayer.
Its first choir was not robed.
Its first sanctuary had no walls.
Its first worshippers stood beneath the hot southern sun, carrying burdens too heavy for words and hope too strong to surrender.
Their chains could bind their hands.
But they could never bind their souls.
With every step they prayed,
Walk with me, Lord.
When children were taken from their mothers…
Walk with me, Lord.
When husbands and wives were separated…
Walk with me, Lord.
When freedom seemed beyond the horizon…
Walk with me, Lord.
When they buried loved ones believing that heaven held the justice earth denied…
Walk with me, Lord.
That prayer became a song.
That song became a testimony.
That testimony became our inheritance.
And that inheritance has led us here.
To the Historic People’s Memorial Burial Park.
Not simply to visit the dead—
but to awaken the living.
For this is more than a cemetery.
This is sacred space.
This is holy ground.
This is a sanctuary without walls.
This is a place where grace still lingers among weathered stones and forgotten names.
Here the ground remembers.
Here the trees remember.
Here the wind remembers.
Here the stones remember.
For more than a century, these sacred acres have embraced the earthly remains of thousands whose lives helped shape Texas and America.
Formerly enslaved men and women.
Black pioneers.
Pastors.
Teachers.
Veterans.
Entrepreneurs.
Mothers.
Fathers.
Children.
Saints whose names were spoken in heaven long before they were forgotten on earth.
Many came into this world with little more than faith.
They left it with everlasting dignity.
Among them rests Mother Sarah C. Thomas.
Born in 1880, only fifteen years after emancipation.
Called home in 1962.
Her life stretched from Reconstruction through Jim Crow, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Her grave now serves as a bridge between the generations.
She is one voice in a great cloud of witnesses.
One stone among thousands.
One song in an everlasting choir.
Yet through God’s providence, her story became the doorway through which one family found its way home.
Through the Digging for Dignity Legacy Project, Mother June Ester Slater, at ninety-two years of age, was reunited with the resting place of her grandmother.
Three generations were reunited.
Not merely for remembrance.
But so generations yet unborn would never lose their inheritance.
Because memory became ministry.
Remembrance became redemption.
Legacy became living.
Then the Scriptures begin to speak.
The Bible begins in a garden.
It ends in a holy city.
But all along the journey, God tells His people one sacred word:
Remember.
Remember the Passover.
Remember the wilderness.
Remember the covenant.
Remember your fathers.
Remember your mothers.
Remember what I have done.
Then comes Joshua.
After Israel crossed the Jordan River, God instructed Joshua to gather twelve stones from the riverbed.
Not because stones possess power.
But because memory does.
Not because rocks can speak.
But because people forget.
The stones became a sermon.
The memorial became a testimony.
The question became holy:
“What mean these stones?”
That question has crossed the centuries.
Today it echoes beneath the Togetherness Tree.
What mean these stones?
They mean God remembers.
Though history forgot…
God remembered.
Though records disappeared…
God remembered.
Though names faded…
God remembered.
Though graves weathered…
God remembered.
And because God remembered…
we remember.
That is why the Digging for Dignity Legacy Project exists.
Not merely to preserve cemeteries.
But to preserve covenant.
Not merely to restore markers.
But to restore memory.
Not merely to reclaim names.
But to reclaim generations.
Joshua meets Malachi.
Memorial stones meet restored families.
Sacred memory meets sacred promise.
For Malachi declared,
“He shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”
Every rediscovered grave…
Every reunited family…
Every restored headstone…
Every recovered story…
is another heart returning home.
Listen carefully.
The stones are still singing.
Every stone has a song.
Every song has a story.
Every story bears witness.
Every witness gives God the glory.
Then Christ begins to walk.
He who walked beside Mary and Martha.
He who stood before a grave and wept.
He who called Lazarus by name.
He who declared,
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
He still walks among these stones.
He still calls forgotten names.
He still restores dignity.
He still turns mourning into hope.
So we keep walking.
One grave at a time.
One family at a time.
One story at a time.
One generation at a time.
Until every forgotten name is remembered.
Until every ancestor is honored.
Until every child yet unborn can answer Joshua’s question.
For more than forty years, that has been my calling.
Whether preserving historic Black cemeteries…
Honoring the Buffalo Soldiers…
Teaching the legacy of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion…
Remembering the Tuskegee Airmen…
Celebrating the Harlem Hellfighters…
Or serving as the formal petitioner whose written request corrected the government-issued headstones of the Black soldiers known as the Hung Before Dawn after nearly one hundred years…
The calling has never changed.
Restore dignity.
Tell the truth.
Honor the dead.
Teach the living.
Prepare the unborn.
Because history is not dead.
It is waiting to be remembered.
And every time we answer Joshua’s question—
another stone sings.
Another family remembers.
Another child comes home.
Another testimony gives God the glory.
So as long as God gives us breath,
our prayer will remain the prayer of our ancestors—
Walk with me, Lord.
Walk with me.
I want Jesus to walk with me.
For this is holy ground.
This is sacred space.
This is amazing grace.
And until every stone has sung its song…
every story has been told…
every legacy has been restored…
and every generation yet unborn can answer,
“What mean these stones?”
We will keep walking with Him.
I believe the final four lines are the signature of the movement:
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