Near where I currently work from there is a bridge over one of the town’s main roads. And under that bridge I often see homeless men and women. Very often, they stagger erratically on the concrete under the bridge or on the paved roads near traffic or on the worn grass near the yield sign.

I use the road frequently. But each time I near it, my stomach experiences a sickening feeling . . . because I know what I am going to see. I am going to see an emaciated black man in a stained t-shirt gesticulating with his hands, as if he’s a bewitched prophet talking of demons. When the traffic light is red and I have been waiting for the light to change, the other drivers and I will see him. He will stumble around in figure eight patterns, his arms and hands flailing, speaking gibberish loudly, making no sense. Back and forth he will go, on a verbal screed.

But today it was not that man; it was this woman. She seemed not so much sitting as collapsing. Under what exactly? A hangover, fentanyl, heroin, meth, exhaustion, shame, loneliness, abandonment? I don’t know. Maybe one or more of those or perhaps none of them or perhaps a combination, I just don’t know.

What I do know, however, is the conflict that runs through my stomach, my heart, my gut, my mind. Each time I near this section of town, I feel it. Should I roll down my car window and offer money? Should I offer to pray? Should I offer to take these people to a shelter? Should I keep my window rolled up as I wait for the traffic light to change, and pretend I don’t see them? As if that fools anyone.

What I am about to say may turn some people off. That is okay, because I know in my bones that what I’m going to say is true: evil is real. Demons are real. Spiritual warfare is real. You can feel it; you can see demons in certain people’s eyes; you can see that invisible forces are moving the hands and tongues of men and women who are oppressed by the supernatural spirits.

Sometimes I wish I could say that I got out of my car, gave these people food, took them to my place so they could shower, took them for a haircut and a new change of clothes, and that it all worked out like a sentimental movie. But that is not the case, at least with me. I simply looked. And knew. And grieved. And did nothing except express on the page how this world is. And how it’s full of the broken. And how evil and suffering are real. And how it’s much harder to know what’s the right thing to do in a world where it’s hard to trust even the woman collapsed under the bridge or the man muttering saliva-ridden screeds to the people in their vehicles with the windows up.