Sacred Intervention

By Justine Faith

Have you ever considered how religion affects government and business operations, policies, standards, and functions even though we have separation of church and state laws? Have you ever considered religion as a sacred tool of sorts to effect and mold righteous government and business policies without preaching and forcing conformity to a specific religious ideology? How does one accomplish living one's religious convictions on a daily basis? Can you be a religious inspiration and leader without ever revealing in detail your religious beliefs? Sacred Intervention is a collection of ten fictional short stories that utilize religious inspiration to address issues involving government and business to elevate society in a specific manner for the well-being of individuals and society as a whole, benefiting from better health, safety, financial stability, and gain and achieving a sense of self-worth. After reading these stories, perhaps you will become inspired and motivated to righteously and legally accomplish something that will result in making our society a better place because of you and your efforts. May God bless and inspire you! And thank you for your interest in reading Sacred Intervention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644243480

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Face in the Window

Mommy! Mommy! screamed a terrified little girl, alone in her second-floor bedroom. Her mother rushed up the stairs to find her seven-year-old daughter hysterical.

Maria was so frightened that she could barely speak with her tiny body shaking as she pointed to the window. Her mother held her close and assured Maria that she was all right, and the horrible thunder and brilliant lightning strikes frequently illuminating her room would not harm her.

No, Mommy! The window. Someone tried to get in, Mommy, but the window slammed shut!

Kathleen thought her daughter was frightened by the wind dislodging the board that propped the window open, causing the window to slam shut during the vicious storm they were experiencing. Kathleen asked Maria to calmly tell her exactly what happened. So little Maria tried to explain.

Maria related that in a lightning strike, a face appeared in the window, and then the window slammed shut. She described the face of a young boy with long black hair down to his shoulders, big almond-shaped eyes, and a huge smile.

Kathleen smiled at her daughter, walked over to the closed window, and looked out to find there was nothing wrong. Only flashes of lightning, thunder, and heavy rain pouring down. She reassured Maria that no one could possibly look into her window as she was on the second floor, and it would take a very large ladder to climb up to her window, and there was no ladder outside the house. Maria insisted there was a face in the window. So Kathleen decided not to argue, but to try and pacify her daughter by telling her that perhaps the face she saw was a lonely little Indian boy. He just wanted a friend to play with, but he was scared off by Maria’s screams. This seemed to calm little Maria for the moment.

Then Kathleen lifted open the window to allow fresh air into the bedroom and asked Maria to hand her the board to prop the window up. To her surprise, Maria could not find the board. So Kathleen searched around and under Maria’s bed for the board to no avail. Then she went through Maria’s bedding, and still the elusive board could not be located. A thorough search of Maria’s bed, bedding, and entire bedroom yielded no board. Impossible, thought Kathleen. She had placed the board in the window when she put Maria to bed. The window had a screen on it that was securely in place allowing nothing to fall outside the window. Kathleen did not want to alarm Maria, but she knew the board had to be there. So Kathleen closed the window and took her daughter downstairs to sleep.

In the morning, the little girl restated the events of the past evening exactly. So when Maria was outside playing with her friends, Kathleen went upstairs to Maria’s bedroom to search for the missing board. The board was gone, never to be found.

Was there a ghost in the window? Where was the board? Why would a ghost want a simple tiny board? And most importantly, why would a ghost appear to Maria?

Many years later, when Maria had become a middle-aged woman, she met a gentleman. He was tall, tan, and terrific being a native Indian with many interesting stories from his tribe. He seemed to be familiar, but she had never met him before. He was a total stranger. But why was his face so familiar? His name was Lane, and he was a carpenter from another state where he was born and raised. He had just recently moved to Maria’s hometown for the first time. They had met as a result of Maria contacting carpenters to do some work on her home. Recent spring storms had finally taken their toll on the roof causing extensive damage to the interior of the Tudor-style house from water leaking from the roof and side walls. Lane just happened to own the company Maria decided to hire to complete the necessary repairs and upgrades to her home. During the eight-week construction process, Maria and Lane had become friends. They enjoyed being together finding they were very compatible. Both were single and childless, and the loneliness they both endured seemed to evaporate since they had met each other.

As time went on, to Maria’s dissatisfaction, she had learned there were many women in Lane’s life; and most were of rather unscrupulous reputations. That troubled Maria as she was a minister who expended many hours each week involved in religious research and church responsibilities. She needed a gentleman at her side that respected her religious calling, a partner with whom she could further her religious endeavors. She knew it would be a mistake to attempt to push or force her religious beliefs and lifestyles onto Lane. So she tried gentle persuasion to coax him to leave the promiscuous lifestyle behind. Maria was getting nowhere fast, and then she had a dream of her deceased mother.

In her dream, Maria’s mother came to her and restated her words when Maria was just a little girl, after she saw a face in her bedroom window: Maria, I think he is just a lonely little Indian boy who wants a friend to play with.

Maria awoke a little shaken, and she immediately thought of Lane. That was why he looked so familiar. He was the exact image of the face she saw as a child in her bedroom window. But how could that be? Maria was twice Lane’s age making it impossible for that face to be his as he had not yet been born when the incident happened.

Could it just be possible that this gentleman’s spirit was appealing to little Maria when she was a child, and the missing board was a clue that he would return to her years later as an adult who would be involved with wood in some manner? This gentleman did influence Maria’s life; however, he chose the lures of evil being seduced into a world of sexual promiscuity that Maria adamantly rejected. And Maria painfully watched as he fell deeper and deeper into the world of sinful sexual behavior that left him bankrupt, in extreme ill-health, and suffering the indignation of losing his treasured family and friends. Maria kept hearing her deceased mother’s words in her mind warning her that Lane only wanted to play. And play he did with any woman that would have him resulting in chronic ill-health complicated by his heavy consumption of alcohol and use of tobacco.

Maria was suspicious that perhaps Lane’s spirit had appealed to Maria as a child, knowing that he would need her righteous influence to draw him away from the sinful life he was destined to live. It seemed to be an appeal for help from a spirit that would be reborn as a human man to perhaps justify a sinful past life, or to attempt to correct a wrong of some sort that living this sinful lifestyle would involve him with. Maria was intrigued and had no answers.

Lane’s work on Maria’s house had come to a conclusion, and Maria had resolved herself to believe that this would also conclude their relationship, as she would not consider allowing his lifestyle to adversely complicate her life. Maria was very pleased with the work Lane had done for her. His carpentry skills were exceptional, and her home was beautiful. Lane had one task left, the final inspection he wanted to make of the roof.

It was a beautiful sunny day in July when Lane went up onto the roof to perform that final inspection. Maria was outside watching the process when she saw a rather troubling white cloud formation. This cloud formation was of a heart with what looked like two spears piercing it. She knew that in her religion, this symbolized a wrong, an evil, or something that needed to be removed from what her faith called the Living Masterpiece, which is God’s creation of our world and universe.

Maria kept watching Lane go about the final inspection of her roof as well as the cloud formation, which began to change. The spears seemed to slowly fall away from the heart, leaving Maria to believe that this was symbolic of the blighted condition of her home being removed and the house being rejuvenated. Then, just as both spears fell well below the heart-shaped cloud, from nowhere a bolt of lightning struck Lane!

Lane was thrown from the roof and landed at Maria’s feet. His body had been charred by the intensity of the lightning, killing him instantly. Maria phoned the authorities, and they promptly arrived pronouncing Lane dead.

In retrospect, Maria had come to the conclusion that the cloud formation she had seen just before Lane’s demise was relative. She concluded that the Holy, Divine Hierarchy was showing her that there were two thorns she was dealing with as illustrated by what appeared to be two spears piercing the heart of the cloud formation. One spear, or thorn, represented blighted housing conditions; and the other spear, or thorn, represented the promiscuous and criminal lifestyle that Lane would not turn away from. After Lane’s demise, Maria had also learned that Lane was deeply involved in a scam to redistribute other people’s wealth, and that she was fortunate that she had not been a victim of his folly. It seemed Lane enjoyed defrauding people of financial means via some sort of rigged injury to afford him legal recourse against his customer for his financial gain. Then he, in turn, would intentionally violate someone he wanted to hand some of his winnings to in an effort to help them financially benefit and to gain their loyalty, being indebted to Lane for their financial gain.

In essence, Lane had chosen to entertain the hate and unscrupulous ways the devil promotes and lures people into to benefit and give strength to her evildoings. According to Maria’s religious convictions, when people knowingly, willingly, and intentionally enter into sinful behavior, they accommodate evil by giving evil spirits strength and depleting strength from the Holy, Divine Hierarchy. Likewise, when people refuse the temptation of wrongdoing, strength is depleted from evil