The concept that God is omniscient still fascinates me. Being able to know everything and see everything . . . Would it be a blessing or a curse? I guess with our Heavenly Father, this is just how things are. Neither a blessing nor a curse but just a fact.

At least a fact that I put my faith in.

I thought of Maggie in her small room at the motel as I drove toward it. I planned on inviting her to the church service that evening, expecting her to say no and to tell me I was crazy once again. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe this whole thing called hope is crazy to believe in, but it’s a beautiful kind of crazy if you ask me.

It’s probably easy to say it’s crazy when you’re scared and tired and alone.

A part of me still wasn’t sure if I could do anything for her. Anything of eternal value, that is. The motel and the dinner and the invite to church were easy. But what could I say to her? What could I do to show I might be safe, that I might be different from some of the people in her life?

Sometimes as a pastor you have to simply ask God to give you the words and the actions and the faith that He can work through you. But I still wasn’t sure. I hadn’t felt God working through me for a long time. Maybe I was just getting tired of preaching the same message to the same people. Maybe I was just getting tired of waiting for God to show up in some kind of way.

On this day, however, I knew I’d be saying some different things. And something inside me felt different.

It had felt different ever since I’d seen the stranger on the street. I felt convicted in a way I hadn’t felt for years. I know that sometimes people don’t think of pastors as the sinners unless they’re skulking away from some kind of public shame. The difficult part of being paid to preach on a weekly basis is practicing the very words you impart.

I was careful to knock on Maggie’s door gently so she wouldn’t be alarmed. It took a few tries before I heard it unlock and creak open. The light in the room was dim compared to the sun outside. In the door I saw her tiny figure with the big, curly head of hair sprouting out like a palm tree.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “You doing okay?”

Her face came more into the clear, those wide eyes still looking so desperate and alone.

“Yeah.”

A teenager’s voice wasn’t supposed to sound that way. Heavy and exhausted. Short and abrupt.

“I wanted to let you know I’m on my way to church. I wanted to see if you’d like to come.”

“It’s okay,” she said without even considering it. “I’m fine.”

“It’s a safe place, Maggie. With a lot of good people there. It’s not a big church. It’s not one of those you’ll get lost in.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “Really, I’m good here.”

“Okay.” I waited for a minute, looking down the hallway each way, hearing the sound of cars and trucks in the background. “Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?”

She answered with a no, shaking her head and looking down.

Everything inside of me wanted to pull her chin up and force the girl to look at me. To see that she could trust me. To see that all I wanted was to help her and her child. That was all. That was everything.

But I couldn’t touch her, I knew that. I was already walking a thin line here, and I needed to be careful of every action and step.

“You have my number, right? If anything comes up, you just call. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said in a barely audible voice.

“I’ll see you later.”

I left not knowing when later would be, not sure whether she’d still be there, not clear what the next step should be. So on my way to church I just asked God to show me the way. It wasn’t a formal or public prayer. It was just one of my many conversations I had with God.

I heard once that Billy Graham was asked about his spiritual discipline, and he said he maintained it by praying without ceasing and by searching the scriptures. Those words have always motivated me, even though my pauses between prayer times have often been far too long and my quests in life have often been outside God’s word.

But in the car in the few moments before arriving at the church, I asked God to help Maggie and to allow me to try to do the same. Whatever way I could. Big or small.