We should all have had a Sunday School teacher like Mrs. Clarke. She was probably the most saintly person I had ever known, with a calm demeanor no matter how unruly we kids were and a lovely Texas drawl to slow our wild California chatter down. She turned the pages of her much-marked Bible with long bony hands and stared us down with dark eyes so deep I figured they went straight to her soul.
Somewhere back in the mists of time she had started to film with her Super 8 camera the stories of the Bible, and one year she cast me as Abraham. In our park, with castoff fabric samples for costumes, sandals on our feet and torn pillowcases for headdresses, she filmed my compatriots and me for her made-for-Sunday-school movie.
Because it was silent she could talk to us as she filmed. “Look up,” she said, directing me like Cecil B. DeMille. “Now you’re hearing the voice of God. He’s telling you that he’s chosen you as a leader for his people. He’s talking just to you.”
Pulling at my spirit-gum beard, I had no problem hamming it up for the humming camera. Later, though, I asked God, “I know you spoke to people long ago in the Bible, but do you still speak to people today?” The concern registered so deep with my 10-year-old self that it became a request: “Can you please speak to me?”
Then one day I was riding my bicycle home from my piano lesson, coming by the school, looking forward to Mom’s meatloaf dinner. The setting sun was bathing the mountains and a few kids were throwing a Frisbee on the field. I lifted my hands up from the handlebar and coasted down the hill, and sure enough, as sure as the Frisbee flying in the sky, I heard him speak, not in the Texas drawl of Mrs. Clarke or in a booming Charlton Heston voice, but something quiet and certain in my head.
I can’t even tell you what the words were or if they were that important. “I’m here. I’m speaking to you,” was the message. It was good enough for me and has remained the gold standard. It’s the simplest prayer of all: “God, are you there?” I’ve never known him not to say in some way, “Yep.” Try it.
