Saturday evening, near the border of Missouri. The air is muggy, but cool for August. Cicadas buzz in the trees around the small town where we pull in, eyes open for our friends or a bathroom — whichever we see first. The red minivan we're driving is a rental, picked up this morning in Detroit, Michigan. We've driven over 500 miles since morning: five Canadian sisters off to see America. It's not the first time, but we're adults now. When we saw America before, we were always children.

Our friends have arranged to meet us here, in a small town about 15 minutes from their house in the country, because they don't want us accidentally getting off on a wrong exit and ending up in the rougher parts of St. Louis. It's a chivalrous arrangement, one we appreciate, and we're excited when a blue SUV pulls up and we make our first contact of the Great Road Trip of 2008. As we drive to their house, we can see the famous Gateway Arch of St. Louis, half-shrouded in the evening haze.

The Gateway Arch is so called because it was built as "the gateway to the west." It sits on the banks of the Mississippi River, marking the great period of western expansion and pioneer spirit that transformed America geographically and culturally. Looking at it from this distance, I seem to be looking into the past. The haze that surrounds it is only fitting — I often feel that the world I live in now is hazy, growing dark and losing its shape. Transformation is needed again, to make something solid and real of us — something aligned to reality as God defines it. Even those who do not believe in God feel the need. Perhaps that is why "change" and "hope" are political buzzwords now.

Our friends live in a huge house on several acres, across the road from an orchard, surrounded by cornfields. They built the house themselves a few years ago, when their boys were old enough to do much of the work. They have a lot of boys — 13 — and one girl. They don't live typical lives, or loud ones, but they're living a life of simple conviction and doing their best to follow God.

After home church and a barbecue, we're on the road again. Destination: Memphis, Tennessee — but only after a stop at the Arch. We intend to jump out here for a quick photo op, but lo, there is a museum beneath our feet. We had no idea. It's free, so naturally we go inside. The museum is dark and hushed. Displays chronicle the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which ended here. Instead of labeling the displays, the museum has simply placed quotes on the walls. Words from Clark's journals; from the Indians they met; from pioneers who moved into the world they opened up. I discover a strange thing: Museums make me cry. So much echoes in a place like this.

In my thoughts, I talk back to the echoes. You've made mistakes, America — plenty of them. But you've come a long way, too. Slavery, featured in some of these exhibits, is gone. The Native peoples of America, long trampled by policy, are at least honored here. Yet, driven by the conviction that God Himself has endowed your people with certain unalienable rights, you have long served as a citadel of hope, opportunity and life for many. I worry about you now. I worry that as you lose sight of the God who gave you these rights, your shape will be lost in the strange murk that threatens you.

You need change, America: conviction-wrought changes that can mold you anew. You need the hope that is only found in God. How can I — and people like me — help you?

One night in Tennessee, and then we're bound for Louisiana. I have never seen anything like Highway 10, built on pillars over a massive cypress swamp. We drive it in the early evening, while a nearly-full moon turns everything blue. Our friends in Lafayette welcome us with jambalaya, green tea and good conversation. They are musicians, a Cajun family who in recent years have learned their faith in powerful ways, and the small children who fill the house with laughter and tears are a testament to the changes they have experienced — changes in letting God plan their family; changes in lifestyle; changes in love.

And so the trip continues. In 16 days we cross 4,000 miles, visiting friends, monuments and beautiful places, from the north to the deep south and back again. It seems we can't turn around without touching history — even in Disney World, where we spend two days, we are doused in it. In a theatre at Epcot Center, Abraham Lincoln stands before the high windows in the Oval Office, looking out on a war that cannot be avoided, and says, "I know that there is a God, and that He hates injustice." God is alive — change is inevitable.

I'm starting to see something on this trip. I see it in the museums, the living history villages, the monuments and memorials in Washington, D.C. It's the simple power of people who follow their convictions, doing what they can to honor God despite their human sin and brokenness. It's the power of little things, done quietly with great dedication, to overhaul the world and make something new.

I see this power, still at work, in the people we visit. I see it in their counter-cultural families, in the decisions they've made to welcome children and raise them to love the Father. I see it in their love for each other and for God. I see it in their sacrifices and struggles. I see it in their collections of books, their writings, their hobbies, their jobs. I see it in their street-corner ministries and the money they pour into missions. They may not see it in themselves, but they bear change on their shoulders.

Change. For all that we decry our modern culture and despair over our post-Christian world — for all that we, like Elijah, declare to God that we are alone in this fight — dedicated people still quietly work change. In their day-to-day choices. In their children. In the steps they take to leave the old behind and embrace God's will for their lives.

In the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, I saw an incredible collection of gems, minerals, crystals and breathtaking stones: All of them formed deep beneath the earth by pressures we're not even aware of. It occurred to me that God delights to do things in secret, beneath our notice, to reveal them to us in His time. And it occurred to me that in families and individuals all over America, God is working in just this way.

When we set out to follow God, sometimes it seems that our little lives can never make any real difference. Yet in us, as we challenge the status quo in our own lives — in us is hope.

In 4,000 miles of American geography, in hundreds of years of history, the marks of hope are everywhere. I am still just one small person, but I follow a great God. I cannot know what things He is doing in the deep places of my life — what precious gems may come forth from the fire. But before me lies a path set by God, and with dedication and simple conviction, I will walk in it until change comes to us all.