Walking the path

(7-minute read)

I was fourteen years old, walking home alone, when God showed up on the sidewalk beside me. He didn’t speak. He didn’t correct me. He just stood there, close enough that I could feel him, until I was certain I wasn’t imagining it. I have spent the rest of my life trying to understand what that moment meant and what it started.

In my sophomore year of high school, I was angry most of the time. That anger put me at odds with my parents and pushed me away from most of my classmates. I had retreated into a small circle of self-described rebels. At fourteen, I was the youngest of the group. We called ourselves a gang, but our exploits amounted to little more than smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. We had more in common with a chess club than anything dangerous. One day, I had a serious falling out with them, and in that moment, it felt permanent. Walking home, I realized that even when I arrived there, I would still be alone, cut off from both friends and family. I had never felt that way before.

About halfway home, the weight of it hit me all at once. I sent up something between a thought and a prayer: Please help me. I don’t know what to do. Immediately, I felt a presence beside me. I stopped and looked around. No one was there, and yet the presence remained, fixed in a particular spot nearby. I cannot explain how, but I knew it was God.

I stood still, afraid to move or speak, certain that any disturbance would cause him to leave. He never spoke to me. But somehow I understood why he had come: not to correct me, not to demand anything from me, simply because I had no one and needed him. The only cry in my heart was, Please don’t leave.

He was nothing like the God I had always imagined, the stern grandfather in the sky, dispensing rules and punishment. This presence was calm. Though clearly older than I was, he seemed somehow young. And strangely, I felt that I mattered to him more than my behavior did, though I had no idea why.

The presence faded, and I walked the rest of the way home. By that evening, I was telling myself it had been some kind of psychological episode, something my brain had manufactured under stress. By the next morning, I felt better and headed off to school, reasoning that the mind does strange things under pressure. But something had shifted permanently, from that day to this, I have never again felt truly alone.

Over the next eleven years, I found myself three separate times in situations where death seemed almost certain. Each time, I called out to the God I had met on the sidewalk. Each time, I promised him I would do whatever he wanted if he spared my life. Each time, I was saved, and still had no idea what he wanted from me.

In 1969, I was working for a computer maintenance company in Tampa, repairing large business systems and data processing equipment. Our New York City office was shorthanded, and I was one of several men asked to go up for a two-week stay. We all brought our wives along so they could see the city while we worked. It went well, right up until the last night.

After two weeks of good meals and sightseeing, Jo and I were running low on money. We decided to walk to Fifth Avenue, catch the first bus that came along, and ride it until we saw a crowd get off, then get off with them. In hindsight, this was not a wise plan. New York in 1969 was not safe, and wandering without a destination was asking for trouble.

As we boarded the bus, I noticed a man with long hair and a beard across the aisle. He was dressed like many of the hippies of that era, jeans, clean but casual, slightly out of place among the businessmen around him. He didn’t seem threatening, but something about him made me uneasy. Every time I glanced his way, he was already looking at me, smiling.

When nearly a quarter of the passengers got off at one stop, Jo and I followed. Within moments, two police officers stopped us on the sidewalk.

“It’s obvious you two don’t belong down here,” one of them said. “You’d be safer back up near Times Square, where the tourists are. Washington Square Park is just ahead, and there are people so far gone on drugs they’re hanging from trees. This is no place for you.”

We thanked him and turned back toward the bus stop. As we did, I saw the bearded man from the bus standing just a few feet behind us, watching, and smiling. We walked past him, rounded the corner, and caught sight of the park the officer had warned us about straight ahead.

“That’s where he said not to go,” I said.

Across the street, a bus rolled up with Times Square on the sign. We ran for it. As I climbed on, I looked back. The bearded man was still at the corner, watching us go, still smiling.

I never saw him again.

On the flight home the next day, I looked out the window thinking about him. And a single thought arrived with quiet clarity: Jesus is after me.

I didn’t know whether that was true. But I knew I didn’t want to run from God if he was the one following. Before the trip, a neighbor named Tom had invited Jo and me to his church. When we got home, I went to his apartment.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” I said, “could Jo and I come to church with you tomorrow?”

He seemed far more pleased about that than I had expected.

After the service on Sunday, the four of us had lunch together. Our wives went shopping; Tom and I watched football. During the game, he said something I had never heard before.

“Did you know that you can keep all Ten Commandments and still not go to heaven?”

That had never occurred to me, though it didn’t exactly trouble me, since I’d never had much success keeping the commandments anyway. I probably said something deeply insightful, like “Oh?”

Tom continued: “The remarkable thing is that Jesus died for our sins so we could go to heaven. All we have to do is accept him.”

He kept talking about Jesus, about spiritual things, occasionally about the devil. Whenever he mentioned something I didn’t buy, I’d push back. “I don’t believe in the devil,” I told him at one point.

“That’s okay,” he said, and went right back to talking about Jesus. Every objection I raised that afternoon got the same response: “That’s okay,” and then he’d return to his theme.

Finally, he paused and looked at me. “Would you like to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior?”

I was ready to wrap things up, to say I needed to think about it, or simply no. Then I remembered the three times I had bargained with God, promising to do anything he asked if he would save my life. And a thought moved through my mind that felt different from my ordinary thinking. It said, This is what I want you to do.

I looked at Tom and said, “Yes.”

He prayed with me, gave me the words to receive Jesus as my Savior, and suggested I begin reading the Bible each day. When I did, I found him there, the God from the sidewalk. I didn’t yet know whether Jesus was God or someone like God, sharing the same calm, unhurried character. But I wanted to find out. I was hooked, and I have never gotten unhooked.

It took years for me to understand that God moves close to everyone, not only to those who believe in him, but even to those who are certain he doesn’t exist. I still don’t always recognize him when he comes. It’s usually only afterward that I realize what happened. But those visits, recognized or not, always leave me wanting to be a better person.

I don’t know where the path ahead leads. What I do know is this: wherever it goes, I will not walk it alone.