How Clark Taylor Found a New Way of Living
By Peter E. Barfoot
Painting by Kevin Perger
On the morning of the day Clark Taylor was saved, his mother Rita, who lived more than 2,000 miles distant in the Northern Territory, noted that an unusual silence hung over the scattered buildings of the isolated cattle station.
Down in the yards, a stockhorse stomped a hoof in the fine dust and swished away the ever-present flies with casual lashes of its tail. Even the aboriginal stockmen had vanished.
Strange, Rita thought, since it was Sunday, the day when matches and other small supplies were handed out.; and where normally snatches of laughter would float over from the meat hut, there was silence.
Something was different…why?
Rita turned her attention back to the book she had been reading: “Peace with God” by Billy Graham, and tried to lost her thoughts in concentration.
Peace with God was what Clark Taylor unknowingly needed. Yet, whenever he brooded over his inner restlessness, he became unsettled. When prodded at such a time by an unwary word or unwelcome action, he would erupt in anger.
Clark laboured long hours on the family property at Palen Creek, near Rathdowney, seventy miles south of Brisbane. He built a pig run, carried grain, milked cows, and ran fat cattle. He broke horses in daytime and ploughed late into the night.
Ploughing was work that Clark liked. It required concentration, yet enabled him to turn over his thoughts. He little knew that on this particular Sunday, that God would use another farmer’s son, now a preacher, to plough and lay open his untouched heart.
“Come and hear Billy Graham, Clark.”
Billy Graham! The mere mention of the name made Clark angry. A Yank and a con-man! From within the 21 year old bachelor farmer – only a year in the South from the rough-tough stock camps of the Territory – came a forceful resistance.
“Clark, why not come along with us…”
Clark’s Aunty Lex (short for Alexandra) quiely reissued the invitation. She knew better than to press her nephew too hard, but like Rita her sister, she had prayed that Clark would attend one of the meetings.
Clark wrestled with the matter. Although wanting to refuse again, but months of living alone had left him desperate for company, and for the quiet hours of conversation of the kind he had known around the glowing embers of outback campfires. Inside he felt an indescribable loneliness.
“Bill is taking me. He is going to the store cattle sales at Ipswich on Monday.” Bill was Clark’s cousin, and he also ran cattle. The small item of information was important, in that it gave Clark the excuse he needed: he could go along with them and on the way find out from Bill the prices the cattle were fetching.
The decision — one which was to lead to another, far greater – was made. He could, yes, he would, go along.
“We’ll go to the Northern Territory, lease a property, and raise beef cattle.”
Rita Taylor raised her eyes from the book she had been reading, hearing again in her memory the words of Joe, her late husband.,
So, to the Territory they had come – leaving another son to manage the Queensland property Clark, who had turned 14 that same year, soon adapted to the active life of the stock camps. It was a dangerous life: scrub bulls and wild buffalo were threats, as also were venomous snakes. Saltwater crocodiles infested many rivers, making horseback crossings hazardous.
Above all, there was the land itself: forbidding, searing, and – in any moment of human weakness – unforgiving. Neighbouring Arnhem Land, a huge aboriginal reservation left almost untouched by the 20th Century, cast an eerie shadow over the sunlit landscape.
In his early teenage years, Clark had spent many a sleepless night, pistol in hand, fearing the violence of the land’s inhabitants. At the age of 16 he had run a mustering camp — a responsibility few grown men could have handled. By that time, he had mastered the art of dismounting at a gallop in order to throw a steer by its tail and strap its legs. He lived on a diet of damper and treacle.
The land over which Clark rode had a strength that stimulated his spirit. Drought, flood, fire: all had ravaged the landscape in attempts to subdue it. Instead, it had recovered, and emerged defiant. The land always won.
Clark, too, would win, unconsciously absorbing into himself forces like those that had threatened the land. The drought of teenage mateship would scar him a little, like the marks on the surrounding hillsides, and if loneliness flooded over him at times, it would pass, leaving him untouched. Anger, too, would burn at times, but the young stockman was too absorbed in life to be consumed by it.
The passing of youth and the coming of manhood saw Clark Taylor very much a man shaped by Territory life. He was, at age 21, the sum of all his experiences. Rita, Clark’s mother, knew her son well; observing, as a mother does, his characteristic ways, she knew that he was well able to look after himself.
So, why then, did she feel on this Sunday, a burden for Clark, a need to bring him before the Lord in almost desperate prayer? Perhaps he was in danger. Knowing that he was breaking horses, she wondered if he could be lying, badly injured and alone, on the Palen Creek property, 2,000 miles south.
Laying aside the now forgotten book, Rita knelt by the chair, and the deserted house was filled with a new sound — one of prevailing prayer by a mother for a son…
Clark sprawled uncomfortably in the front seat of Bill’s Holden sedan. Never one for idle conversation (except around a campfire at midnight) he fidgeted in his mind for words. Family interests, cattle, the new pig run – all had been discussed. Clark’s Aunty Lex sat in the back, prompting the conversation from time to time, while carefully avoiding too much emphasis on the Crusade … and Billy Graham.
Clark wished that he was driving: he felt desperate, trapped. Only his respect for his aunty kept him from boiling over… He wanted to cry STOP THE CAR — LET ME OUT! He savaged himself inwardly for allowing himself to be talked into coming along. What stupidity!
Instead, he sat quietly while the miles passed in mild conversation. The journey lasted two hours. It was a journey that he had made many times. But never had the fabric of his future felt as threatened as it did this day. Billy Graham!
Well, at least he would be able to see and hear the man for himself. A sense of fairness held him for a moment, but then the emotions half-buried beneath the surface broke through gain, and his thoughts were again unspeakable.
Clark looked out through the side window. The tree-studded hills of the countryside had changed and now held scattered, weatherboard houses. They were nearing Brisbane…
Oh well! Clark sighed inwardly and recrossed his long legs. At least his mother, when she heard about it, would be happy that he had gone to church… The car sped on, the late afternoon shadows foretelling the end of the day. Ahead, the Exhibition Grounds…and the Billy Graham Crusade.
Rita Taylor parted the curtains and looked out over the scattered buildings that dozed in the afternoon sun. Night would soon descend, suddenly, without the twilight that held it back in southern states. She thought of “Haddon Vale”, the Palen Creek homestead, and of Clark, who had moved to the southern property, after the death of her husband, Joe, in a tractor accident.
The Queensland property, a square mile in area, was only as large as the horse paddock here in the Territory. Both properties held good memories of family events, friendly faces, children born, schooled, trained to sit the saddle and read tracks…
Clark had always been special. Rita had dedicated him to God when at three months into her pregnancy she felt that the Lord had spared his life. “Lord, make him a minister” she had prayed. He had almost died at birth. Rita remembered the “Hail Mary’s” that had showed the midwife’s concern, and the number of smacks necessary to make the newborn baby cry.
She remembered how at age 3 Clark had disappeared into a waterhole during a picnic. Joe had quickly hauled him out…the first of many times that he would pull him out of danger.
Was Clark in danger this day? If so, who would be with him?
Despite hours of prayer, of reading “Peace with God”, and of leafing through her well-thumbed Bible, Rita remained restless.
Then she remembered that Lex had sent her a Billy Graham Crusade Songbook. Where was it? Oh yes, over on top of the piano. Seating herself at it, she opened the book, turned to a familiar hymn, and began to play.
“To God be the glory,
Great things He hath done,
So loved He the world
that He gave us His Son…”
The Crusade choir, hundreds strong, and ably led by Songleader Cliff Barrows, sang fervently. Tonight was the final night of the Crusade. The bright moonlight revealed a scene typical of Billy’s crusades. Thousands had gathered, many from Outback Queensland, to join in what had already been described as an historic event in Australian church life.
The words of the hymn meant nothing, Clark told himself. Seated on the grass of the arena, and looking up at the thousands in the grandstand, he cursed their churchiness and their assurance. Had there been a group of vocal hecklers, he might have joined them…but here he was alone – as alone as he had been on other moonlit nights far away from crowds…and from Christianity.
The crowd fell silent, drawing Clark’s gaze to the stage in the centre of the arena. The boyish-looking Cliff Barrows had stepped back, giving place to a tall, wavy-haired man whose craggy face and penetrating eyes commanded Clark’s attention.
Billy Graham. So this was Billy Graham. A dark-suited, fortiesh tall figure whose right hand held a New Testament, whose left-hand index finger stabbed skyward, and whose voice carried clearly to every part of the arena.
After praying, Billy Graham began to preach. He would preach for about fort minutes on this night. He would question, answer, anticipate, explain. He would speak of Heaven and warn of Hell; he would even object, on his listener’s behalf, to his own statements.
“But Billy, you say…” would be repeated often, followed by “The Bible says…” By the close of his sermon, he would have answered every objection and closed every exit, leaving only Jesus, The Way.
He would have spoken thousands of words…and Clark Taylor would not have heard one of them.
“CLARK.”
The voice, unlike any Clark had ever heard, somehow entered into the very centre of his being.
There, in front and slightly above the heads of those seated a few feet away, stood Jesus.,,
In the next forty or so minutes something took place that was unknown…even to Clark Taylor. Somehow, the spirit of a man which life had battered and embittered received an awakening, in a communion that would forever defy explanation.
Then he was gone…and Clark, aware once again of his surroundings, was amazed to find that Billy Graham had finished speaking. The choir was again singing…this time invitingly…
“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.”
The evangelist was standing, head bowed, chin propped, silently praying. In the bright moonlight and arena lights, people — hundreds of people – were streaming forward…from the grandstand, from the open air seats, and from the grassed oval where Clark sat, stirred in heart as never before.
Still, within him, the battle raged, as reason fought revelation and pent-up anger the love of Jesus Christ. Verse after verse was sung and still they came, people from all walks of life; men and women of all ages…coming to Christ.
“Thy love unknown, hast broken every barrier down…”
Barriers there had been, but now they crumbled. Nothing mattered beyond this moment…only Jesus. (O Lord, how I’ve missed you!)
“The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove…”
It was time. Fighting feelings of foolishness, Clark rose to his feet and joined the throngs of repentant sinners standing in front of the platform. He did so on the very last verse.
Rita arose and looked at the clock. It was late, the end of a long day. She felt lightened in her spirit, and knew that God had heard her prayers. Tomorrow, she would write to Clark, she promised herself., as she prepared for bed.(Their letters —Rita’s, asking about Clark’s safety; Clark’s, telling of his conversion – would cross in the mail.)
The lights went out and darkness at last ruled…
But not in the heart of Clark Taylor.