She came to see me on a stormy Tuesday afternoon—a waif in a wet, oversized raincoat.

Her head hung down. Her responses to my initial questions were monosyllabic. She was twenty-something, scared, and obviously depressed. The scenario developed slowly and painfully.

"So, why do you need to see an attorney?"

"I stole money at work."

"Where do you work?"

"A bank."

"Oh. What do you do at the bank?"

"I’m an assistant manager."

"How much did you take?"

"The audit found $10,000."

"What happened then?"

"Bank security talked to me. I’ve been suspended."

"Did they tell you what they are going to do next?"

"They told me they would contact me."

"I’m sure they will."

She kept her head down as she answered. There was no eye contact.

"Is that all the money you took?"

Silence.

"Anything you tell me here is privileged. I can help you only if you are honest with me. Are the auditors going to find more money missing?"

"Yes."

"How much more?"

"$40,000."

"Believe me, the bank is not going to overlook $40,000.00. Why did you take it?"

"I was angry."

"Angry at whom?"

"Pretty much everyone. Nobody cared at work. Nobody listened at home. So I just took it."

"Do you still have the money?"

She shook her head. "No."

"What did you do with it?"

"I spent it on stuff."

"What stuff?"

"A car, clothes, paying off credit cards."

"What does your husband have to do with this?"

"He doesn’t know and he couldn’t care less." Tears begin to run out of her large brown eyes. With her head tilted down, they rolled off her nose and onto the rain coat.

"Hey," I asked, "what’s really going on with you?" I pushed a box of Kleenex across the desk to her.

Her story began to dribble out in the gasped pauses between sobs.

She had been released from a mental hospital that morning. She was admitted after a suicide attempt.

There was posttraumatic stress from a sexual assault. Her parents and husband blamed her for the rape. She had suffered a miscarriage. Her marriage was breaking up. She was mad and broken and ashamed. Taking the money was an act of raging revenge and self-destruction.

After a while, her voice just trailed off and she stared at the carpet.

"OK," I said. "You do need an attorney, but it needs to be a criminal defense specialist. The bank’s money is federally insured. The FBI is going to be involved. I am a business lawyer and I don’t handle criminal cases. I’ll need to refer you to another attorney. OK?"

She shrugged.

"Your best chance is to cut a deal with the prosecutor based on first offense and restitution. The criminal attorneys know the prosecutors and can talk to them. I’ll call one right now."

I looked up a number and reached for the phone. A Bible verse came into my mind: "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you" (Acts 3:6).

I tried to shove the verse out of my mind, but the Holy Spirit was insistent. I saw with clarity what the verse meant. The "silver and gold" was legal representation. What I had to offer was God. I prayed silently in my heart. "Father, I can’t represent this woman, but I know you. Will you help her?"

Replacing the phone receiver, I asked, "Do you have any kind of spiritual background?"

"I went to church when I was a little girl."

"Look, I can’t represent you, but I want to tell you about someone who can help you. You’ve done something here that I haven’t done, but I’ve done things that hurt people and made me feel really bad. But I found that God loves me and forgives me and no matter what the consequences of what I’ve done he’ll meet them with me. Is it okay with you to talk about this for a while?"

She looked up at me for the first time and nodded, "Yes."

"You will likely go to jail. The FBI may come and arrest you at your home and take you away in handcuffs in front of your neighbors. But you know what? God promises that He’ll be there with you every step of the way. He’ll go to jail with you. He’ll go to court with you. Nothing can separate you from his love. Nothing!"

I reached in the book case behind my desk and pulled out a Bible. "There was man named David," I told her. "The Bible talks a lot about him and contains many of his own prayers and songs. His boss, the king, turned on him and he was a fugitive on the run, hiding in a cave. He prayed this prayer:

Save me from my
persecutors,
for they are too strong for me.
Bring me out of prison,
so that I may give thanks
to your name.
The righteous will
surround me,
for you will deal
bountifully with me.
(Ps. 142 NRSV)

"Is this how you feel right now? Trapped and no one cares whether you live or die? God cares. He will hold your hand through this, through the shame and the punishment. On the other side is a whole family of his children who will love and support you. That’s what David meant when he said, after I get ’out of prison.’ The righteous will surround me, for you (that’s God) will deal bountifully with me’ (that’s you)."

"You know how he does this?," I asked her.

"No."

"God’s Son, Jesus Christ, came to earth and became a human, lived and died as one of us, and went through everything we go through. The authorities condemned Jesus to die. He died for the sins of every other human including you and me so that, through him, we are forgiven and can live with him forever in heaven. Jesus described it this way: ’For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16)."

"Once we know, really know in here (I pointed to my heart) that we are loved and we will live forever in that love, we can face anything, even death. Jesus’ follower Paul said that God would not hold back anything to save us, even his Son. Jesus willingly took all the condemnation dumped on us and absorbed it. No matter what we have done, no matter what is done to us, Jesus will not stop loving us or leave us. Here is what Paul wrote: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. ’Now listen closely,’ for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 8:35–39 NRSV)."

I closed the Bible and asked her, "Do your understand what I am telling you? Do you believe this?"

The tears flowed down her cheeks as she nodded "Yes."

We sat in silence. Outside my window, traffic sloshed through the intersection of Sixth and Main and the wind whipped the leaves of the Lemon Gum trees. Inside, our hearts could sense the breath of heaven exhaling in release.

I picked up the phone again to arrange for defense counsel. She reached across my desk and picked up my Bible. She leafed through it as I talked to the other attorney.

When I was through with the call, I asked her, "Would you like to have that Bible."

She was surprised. "You would give me your Bible?"

"Yes, if you want it."

"I do. Thank you."

"Here, let me write out where you can find the verses that I read to you. Please go home and read them again for yourself."

We went over the information for the appointment with her counsel. We stood. I gave her a hug. "Everything I told you today is true," I said.

"I know that," she said.

Months later, she sent me a card with this message:

"I want to thank you for what you have done for me.…I have been doing better these past days. I met with the FBI. My lawyer was there. He is a great lawyer. But like you said, lawyers, judges, and people could not really help. It’s just praying to God, who could help, and to believe in him. He said during our times of trial is when he carries us. God bless you."

She went on through a fine and imprisonment to a new life with a restored marriage, and today is a homemaker with two children and a living faith in Christ.

If you wait for exactly the right time and precisely the right place to say the right thing about Jesus to those in need of grace, you and the one in need will likely wait forever—and eternity is too long to wait. Discipleship is an applied art, not a laboratory science.

Paul said that where sin is active and pernicious, grace abounds (Rom. 5:20). Responding to the suggestion of the Holy Spirit that rainy afternoon in my law office changed the young woman’s life and mine. When you encounter those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God, share the bread of your own experience and trust Christ to make a meal of it right there.

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