I watched J.D. and Teri walk back inside their two-story house, and knew the demons that followed them. I’d done my best to help them through the difficult times, and with their grief, but I also knew that grief didn’t simply vanish. I could only imagine how they sometimes felt living in a house too big for two souls. I knew the rooms were weighted down with silence. In a small way, I understood that silence better than they realized.

Sometimes you grieved the soul that left you behind, like the Newtons did. And sometimes you grieved a soul unseen, like Grace and I did. That child we had tried for and failed to conceive never left our minds.

I drove back home using a main boulevard rather than side streets. Drove might not be the word. It felt like I floated, my head lost in thoughts like always. Sometimes I prayed during times like this, but I didn’t feel like praying. Yes, pastors sometimes didn’t feel like praying, and this was one of those times.

A prayer, however, was waiting for me at a red light. A prayer in the form of a man carrying a cross.

At first I didn’t know what I was seeing. My car was stopped alone at the traffic light. The man himself was large and imposing, but the cross he carried was even larger. The way he lugged it with both arms made it obvious it was heavy. He wore grubby and worn clothes and stopped right in front of me.

The look he gave made me wonder if he was crazy. His eyes were wide and seemed to stare me down like oncoming tractor trailer lights. The African American looked serious and stranded. He simply watched me.

The light above us turned green, but the Old Testament prophet didn’t move. He was carrying a cross, and was likely certifiably crazy. I was ready to put my car in reverse and tear down the avenue the other way. Yet for some reason I waited and watched what the big guy was going to do.

He moved and shifted so he could come alongside my car. He waited for me to roll down my window. Even before I could get it down fully I heard the man speaking in a deep bass tone. A voice thick like black coffee.

“Whole world’s runnin’ to its destruction. Devil’s dug a big hole, and people are fightin’ each other for the chance to be the first to jump in.”

I waited as the man looked intently down at me.

“Tell me, son. Do you believe in the cross of Christ?”

It was a simple question, and quite an ironic one. I couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m a pastor.”

He didn’t need any more of an answer, did he? We didn’t need to converse about the cross because both of us obviously knew about it. I’m not sure I quite understood the whole carrying-a-real-cross-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing, but I wasn’t going to fault the guy for it. Even if he looked dangerous. I knew danger came in all shapes, sizes, colors, and forms.

“You haven’t answered my question,” the stranger said, his eyes peeling me open with their intensity. “I asked you: do you believe in the cross of Christ?”

It was strange to be on the receiving end of this. It had been . . . well, I couldn’t remember the last time someone had witnessed to me. I was usually the preacher, the evangelist, the one praying, the one telling others about God.

I think my smile had started to fade.

“Of course . . .” I said, my voice trailing off.

It wasn’t that I was uncertain of the answer. I just didn’t know where he was going, and why he was asking me this in the middle of the street in the middle of the night.

He didn’t appear to be even close to letting me leave.

“Listen to me. Believin’—true believin’—ain’t just knowin’ about it, or preachin’ about it . . .”

The stranger pointed at the cross in his arm.

“No, true believin’ means acceptin’ that Christ carried this cross, was nailed to this cross, died on this cross . . . all for you!”

The man who sounded like some kind of southern preacher working his magic and getting “Hallelujahs” and “Amens” from the crowd only had my silence as his audience. I didn’t know what to say.

Something in me wanted to sink into my seat. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

“If you truly believe that, then I ask you . . .” the man continued on, moving closer to me, luring me in with that expression of wonder and awe. “What are you doin’ about it, son?”

I wanted to say something but couldn’t. I was speechless. Not because of the surprise of what he said. No. It was how he said it. With a terrified and urgent tone.

I might have answered, but just then something else interrupted us.

The crash of glass made us both look the other way. I know now that there was nothing random about it, that the stranger who came into my life the next moment was brought there for a reason. This unlikely soul wasn’t just wandering in the night. He was running up to me and inadvertently holding up a mirror.

He wouldn’t know it, of course, and neither would I.

Yet I know it now.