Souls on the Bridge of Forever, Prodigy and Prodigy New Creation: Inspirational & Thought Provoking Novellas for the Christian Spirit
I am hoping to release this next book sometime in the next 6 to 12 months. Its first novella, Souls on the Bridge of Forever, is currently being reviewed and edited. I am almost finished with the second novella entitled Prodigy. Both novellas contain heavy theology yet are fast-paced, deeply emotional, and inspiring.
They will meet upon a bridge of serendipity. Their initial trust will melt the winter frost. Laughter will echo throughout the valley. Their debates will shake the Nevada sands. Tears will trickle down into rushing waters far below. Weekly chitchat will move their spirits closer to glory than their worldliness will ever expect. Their exchanges will be filled with wonder—all the hopes of a father of several lifetimes passed on to a daughter in her youth. The essence of their relationship will grow, on a weekly basis, from a pair of strangers of the morning to the closest of friends in the night. Their spirits will touch in time, and they will not forget in eternity…
Souls on the Bridge of Forevertells of a meeting upon an old bridge in the countryside outside Las Vegas between a businessman with a sinful past and a young woman destined for destruction. For fifteen months, they share stories of hope, fear, triumph and sorrow as their lives ascend above the clouds of redemption and sink below the shadows of suicide. Filled with emotion and spirituality, Souls joins Daniel and Maria in their quest to know the wonders of God and the mysteries of the heart.
Journey to the ends of creation…
Journey to a place hidden within the human spirit…
Prodigyintroduces Lystera, a brilliant scientist from another planet with a heart of mounting evil and unrelenting ambition who journeys to Earth to find her soul on the brink of redemption and insanity. Is Lystera’s destiny to become an instrument for the God of the universe or a pawn for Evil’s most diabolical endgame stratagem? Prodigy and Prodigy New Creation take you into a world of lost innocence, political intrigue, buried wrath, Biblical prophecy, extraordinary sacrifice and unforeseen love as lived by one of the Divine’s greatest creations.
From Chapter 15 of Souls on the Bridge of Forever
~ 15 ~ Angels Spread Their Wings
Daniel’s mounting pride had widened the chasm between God and him for decades. Why had God allowed a lost soul on its way to Hell to have the capacity for excessive pride? Daniel was created to perform extraordinary tasks so he had to be able to recognize the extraordinary. God did curtail Daniel’s pride to an extent, as he felt ordinary despite his ability to communicate with a living God and his destiny to reign in the heavens at the feet of Jesus Christ. The entrepreneur had boasted of his few talents, but spent much time and energy covering up his many flaws. This divine “set-up” curtailed Daniel’s pride until the Lord deemed him ready to use his extraordinary abilities. But when a girl destined for destruction entered his life, God unleashed Daniel’s extraordinary abilities even if it risked cultivating pride. At times, God allowed a Christian’s arrogance to build because He knew He’d have more to work with after the fall. God may have preferred this scenario to Daniel tiptoeing through a rose-colored life of carnal humility full of pride regarding his modesty.
Maria possessed the face of an angel, which allowed her to command a premium. Most men didn’t know what they wanted from night to night, and then there were those who were intoxicated by an irresistible Mexican-American coed. Most of the clientele were extraordinary men—a few were men of renown. Maria had heart-to-hearts with politicians and businessmen who themselves were topics of conversation at bus stops and lunch breaks. The proud angel overheard the flattering whispers in the night, which eased the sting of past disappointments. Ambition swelled as the girl-in-demand associated more with those in power. Men would promise luxurious gifts and trips, and a few followed through in their lust. On occasion under a full moon, sin-driven expectations were not met. The experienced nineteen-year old learned to anticipate rejection when dealing with unremitting self-centeredness. Maria endured the lonesome night in the country praying under the stars. The roofed bridge shielded the huddled prisoner from much of the harsh autumn winds. Her weekly time with Daniel, which was hours away, instilled hope in the chill of neglect.
“My goodness, you’ve been here all night again,” bewailed Daniel. “Let me get you home.”
“I’m okay,” insisted Maria, watching an eagle soar into the daylight. “I want to tell you something. I’ve been thinking about it all night. Remember that story about the eagle who was raised by chickens?”
“Yeah.”
“The eagle was told he was a chicken, became convinced he was a chicken and remained a chicken.”
“Okay.”
“Does Christianity transform us from chickens to eagles?”
“Jesus Christ exhorts us to be perfect. In the present, we must remain in imperfection so there is no mistaking our sinful chicken existence,” preached Daniel. “But if it were not true, our Lord would not call us to perfection. Our destiny is eagle. We cannot remain chicken forever. We either soar or be devoured in eternity.”
“We are eagles in disguise,” Maria deadpanned.
“If you look at the complexities of our bodies and minds, we are extraordinary entities living out ordinary lives. There are great men and women strategically placed in time to advance civilization, but their accomplishments pale in comparison to the simple miracle of a father, mother and child building a castle in the sand,” perceived Daniel. “We pray to God to maximize our ‘chicken lives’ and we wonder why we feel ignored.” Two souls escaped into a beautiful landscape. “The mountains and the fields, the chill in the air, and the precise angle of the sun’s rays reflecting off the bridge, off our skin in this moment, were created for you and me.”
“You and me, huh.”
“Like our Creator, we are the only ones who can appreciate what we see before us,” imagined Daniel, his arm extended into the splendor. “Christianity is much the same way. The thousands of Bible verses, the pools of blood shed by martyrs, the churches planted in many nations and a God coming into the created universe were done for one thing: the sinner’s choice to accept or reject Jesus Christ. Each chicken must decide. It is probable the entire world and space-time itself carry on for no other reason.”
From Chapter 18 ofSouls on the Bridge of Forever
~ 18 ~ Missed Opportunities
Maria had given Conseula much delight until the clock struck twelve years and the great rebellion began. Choice will not be after physical death, so why did God give an immature spirit the authority to rebel in the first place? Maria’s next life would be eternal marriage or divorce but she was currently in the courtship phase, which implied choice. In the New Earth, God would not so much be removing her free will but instituting perfection. “Free” would no longer have meaning for Maria as “captivity” would no longer have meaning. Her transformed state would be something more than free.
After he lost his only child to selfishness, Daniel was resigned to the fact he would never have another to nurture, discipline, love or anguish over. For his son’s sake, the last tear trickled into and was swallowed by cold directionless waters below the bridge, cut off from the rest of a father’s life. That was before she entered into his picture. From the dusty road, Daniel saw the angel with the lonely smile carrying the baggage of a broken home on the last leg of her journey to a destination from which she would never return. On the bridge of forever, depleted souls held hands in their last stand against a world which had given and taken away so much. Maria would give Daniel, the flawed father she never had and the adulterer of old, one last chance at parenthood.
Much had changed in the last eight months. The weather had been unseasonably enjoyable at the beginning of the week, but Nevada rains and bitter winds returned by Thursday. Autumn was now crossing over into winter with repeated frosts and thaws, and Daniel and Maria knew they’d soon be meeting on frozen ground. Maria had been working less and earning more which permitted more time to explore the Scriptures. “I am sure of one thing. Jesus’ teachings had extraordinary moral, social and psychological merit,” affirmed Maria. “His teachings were so profound that instructors at my college used to attribute most of his sayings to unknown parties.”
“Unknown parties?” inquired Daniel. “Why would such unknown parties give up credit to a carpenter from Nazareth?”
“Maybe Jesus was a spokesman for intellectuals and philosophers who feared retribution from Jewish religious and political leaders,” hypothesized Maria. “One thing is certain—Jesus was a great speaker.”
“If so, why did future generations of Christians continue to credit Jesus long after the deaths of the unknown parties?” challenged Daniel. “We also have Jesus’ extraordinary claims he was God which were shamelessly proclaimed throughout his ministry. The unknown parties would have had a problem with these heretical public announcements.”
“Maybe Jesus had a god-complex,” conjectured Maria. “After all, he possessed an extraordinary mind and personality.”
“But there were many happenings that went beyond the mind and the personality. We know of a moment where Jesus mentions, almost nonchalantly, to have sent prophets and intellectuals to Israel for hundreds of years,” cited Daniel. “Why would a man with a brilliant mind and magnetic personality make claims that would cast doubt upon his mind and personality?”
“One professor theorized Jesus was an intellectual manic-depressive intermixing brilliant philosophy with insanity,” responded Maria.
“But within the same sermon and sometimes in consecutive sentences?” noted Daniel. “And intermixed with his groundbreaking moral teaching was his claim to forgive sins. Not just those who had crucified or betrayed him but people he never knew. People not yet born.”
“You and me,” realized Maria.
“Jesus was a man who built an incredible spiritual and intellectual legacy—naturally he’d want it recorded. Inexplicably, he makes a point to inform his followers the rules don’t apply to him, thus angering the religious leaders of the day, the very men in the best position to chronicle his legacy,” pointed out Daniel. “Jesus Christ preached obsessively about eternal life. He promised to give life more abundantly, yet had an ongoing prescience of his own dark fate. At a trial for life, enemies could not prove Jesus guilty of wrongdoing. Eyewitnesses for the prosecution failed one after another. Then the Nazarene was asked a question. Moments away from acquittal, Jesus answered I am.”
“I don’t understand,” admitted Maria.
“For the court and for all time, Jesus declared himself God, defying Caesar. Something no Jew dared do. An act that, at last, allowed them to sentence the accused to death by crucifixion.”
From Chapter 19 ofSouls on the Bridge of Forever
~ 19 ~ Best Laid Plans
Materialism was allowed to thrive in the hearts of Daniel and Maria even though its heights were the roots of evil, and its depths had lead to financial ruin and would lead to suicide, respectively. God did not create these souls on a bridge of forever to work, but toiling was necessary in a world where idleness and comfort widened the broad path to destruction. God allowed these fated children to chase after the pot of gold at rainbow’s end, because it was the chase that lead them to the knowledge that the pot of gold was not there. Broad was the road to their destruction, but it was on such roads “destruction” could be identified and ultimately destroyed. Daniel had worked until he bled and now Maria’s hands were bleeding—droplets seeping through but unable to extinguish the fire. At times, God intended for them to toil, and bleed, to keep them on the pathway of the present, the only time they could touch the timeless. A God who inexplicably allowed futility for Daniel now led Maria to this same fate. Futility, a great lack of answers, was the blessed answer in a world with no lasting answers. In order to find truth, in order to be set free, Daniel and Maria had to experience the pain of the great lie. At times, this desire could only be cultivated with bleeding hands toiling in the field and with hearts consumed in materialism.
God had implanted big dreams in the heart of the teenager, but the world used talent and ambition to make them come true. Maria had accepted the purchase agreement, had gone through the escrow process, and was ready to receive the keys to her new home nestled in the woods at the outskirts of a remote Las Vegas suburb. The second-generation Mexican-American had arrived in Nevada with a few thousand, but had earned more than three hundred thousand in less than two years. The little girl with ponytails best remembered for wearing hand-me-downs was now flaunting top of the line Gucci apparel. There were others as skilled and as attractive as Maria, but few could match her dedication to her craft, and men paid a premium for her masterpieces. In the city of lights and intense rivalries, Maria’s fearlessness allowed her to win big. For a long time, she believed she knew what she wanted. Now, she was sure she just wanted it all to go away for a while.
Daniel and Maria had shared a lifetime in less than ten months, but today they exchanged Christmas gifts on this last meeting of the year. Their panorama was as it had never been before—ice floated down the river, snow draped on treetops and icicles hung from the bridge of forever. The winter waterfall had formed a torrent of snow with ice coagulated at its base. There were so many topics to cover on this occasion including Christianity. “My instructors used to remind us there were others in history like Jesus,” brought up Maria.
“A few exhibited the extreme characteristics of Christ, but there has never been another who’s had it all,” clarified Daniel. “We’ve had religious fanatics, which was foretold in the Bible, and for whom followers gave their lives, but their influence never reached far past the compound.”
“What about Buddha, and Mohammed, and Confucius, and Aristotle?” mentioned Maria.
“Those men were too sane to be put in the same category as Jesus. They were great thinkers,” distinguished Daniel. “Christ claimed to be God. That assertion alone would cast serious doubt on his status as a great thinker. Also, those philosophers commanded the same kind of adoration as Christ, but not the same kind of hatred. That’s interesting. People who claim to be God are usually laughed at. Jesus Christ was plotted against, hunted down and killed. His enemies took him dead serious.”
“You spoke earlier of how incredible it was that Jesus fulfilled all those Old Testament prophecies,” recalled Maria. “There have been kings and conquerors who fulfilled the predictions of their respective books of antiquity.”
“A big difference that authenticates Christianity is the people who predicted the coming of the Messiah, the Jews, deny Jesus was their predicted Messiah,” discerned Daniel. “According to scholars, Jesus fulfilled prophecies despite serious reservations from the very people who initiated the prophecies. That’s amazing.”
“I know you’ve heard this before, but I’m going to say it again,” cautioned Maria. “The Bible was written by men.”
“Jews started Christianity and wrote the New Testament,” contested Daniel, “the one ancient people in a world dominated by polytheism and pantheism who worshiped a single God, and least likely to invent a Son of God.”
“The Jesus Seminar maintains the Bible is a mish-mash of fact and make-believe,” asserted Maria. “Some of the passages are history while others are legend.”
“It is interesting the Book of Matthew is written by Matthew. If Matthew were making things up, maybe he should have called himself Matthew the historian instead of Matthew the tax collector, a highly distrusted member of Jewish society,” proposed Daniel. “When you read the Bible on a humid Sunday morning, do you feel you’re reciting legend? The plot is disconnected, most of the characters are unremarkable and the suspense is lacking.”
“My English professor noted the hero of the story, Jesus Christ,” concurred Maria, “is missing huge chunks of his hero origins.”
“The supposed legend of Jesus Christ is peppered with many irrelevant tidbits of Jesus saying this and Jesus doing that. You would think the great authors of biblical legend, and they are great to have written a work which has captivated the minds and hearts of people from all walks of life for millennia, would have removed these trivial details,” surmised Daniel. “Why would they leave them in? They do not add to the legend. Maybe they were attempting to preserve the authenticity of an account, making sure not to leave out important facts. Making sure to record all that was actually seen.”
From Chapter 24 ofSouls on the Bridge of Forever
~ 24 ~ Transformation
Much time had passed since Daniel and Maria’s families dissolved, yet they were, at different times, carrying their pain into death. Their existences were broken spiritual relationships, their continued existences merely opportunities for reconciliation. God’s work was hindered in Daniel’s former functional family where “brokenness” was hidden. And his now broken home compelled an ex-husband to address his true state. Brokenness enveloped a pair of souls on the bridge of forever in depression and loneliness. But it reminded them of what needed to be resolved before the next world, and its sting seemed to last forever. In that dark place after death, their brokenness would become permanent, and the “forever” they felt in the world would become but a “second”. The opportunity they had for spiritual reconciliation, the years of temporal hurt, would become but a memory. If Daniel and Maria never experienced brokenness, they would never know that eternal joy awaited them only in restoration. It was why their souls had to be opened like Pandora’s box, why their love had to be made vulnerable, and why their hearts had to be able to be broken. If not, their love would have remained perfectly safe in hardware stores, fame and financial security always in mint condition in the safety deposit box of their selfishness. There, it would become unbreakable.
Maria looked as if she had aged ten years in ten weeks. A blank, lifeless stare betrayed every cry of a soul’s agony. The once radiant teenager had drunk herself into a psychological coma with bottles of wine purchased from all-day supermarkets and late-night liquor stores. Wholesome weight was lost since the first sip of four years ago, and her stomach was now bloated from the recent alcohol assault. Silky hair fell out, skin color changed and an appetite diminished. Maria was terrified to look in the mirror because the whites of her eyes were no longer white. The only way to stop the pain was costly painkillers she could no longer afford. It was unbearable for Daniel to see his girl undergo transformation, but he resentfully obeyed God’s cruel instructions. Maria’s only remaining friend knew time was running out. Now more than ever, God poured out agape love upon the precious.
Across the April landscape, new grass formed far more beautiful to Daniel and Maria than to others who had not been there for fourteen months. Show-stopping azaleas were in full force blending with pink and orange blooms to unleash Las Vegas fireworks in the country. Mountain laurels with their blissful pink and white flowers summoned birds, frogs and butterflies. Today’s meeting was by far the longest beginning with nature’s orchestra of all creatures under the morning sun and ending with a serenade of maverick frogs and cheerful crickets beneath a full moon. Maria’s words did not come forth with as much vigor and articulateness as they once had. “I had a friend who became a Christian. Her life changed, that’s for sure. She lost most of her closest friends, including me. The last I heard, she was battling illness. Has Christianity really helped her? She might die.”
“Let’s not worry about who we are, and let God make us what he intended for us to be. Illness and death are secondary to the core issue,” insisted Daniel. “God is the inventor, and we are the invention. To sway from the plan is the essence of foolishness. To follow the plan is all we’ll ever need.”
“If we are inventions, does choice really ever come into play?” raised Maria with edginess.
“What makes us the most special of inventions is our ability to choose,” discerned Daniel. “It is extraordinary and inexplicable that the inventor has given the invention the power to not be the intended invention. We have exercised this power to the fullest.”
“We cannot last one second in the created universe without him holding our atoms together in a meaningful way,” realized Maria. “Entire lifetimes pass without us noticing this plain fact.”
“We can attempt to follow Jesus Christ with all our might, and we will not come close to what God intends for us to be in the end,” preached Daniel. “But the closer we come to God’s intended invention the happier we will be in this life, even unto death.”
“After she became a Christian, things got better for my friend,” recalled Maria. “But after several months, a lot of the old problems returned. These tribulations were necessary before to draw her to Christ, but what is their purpose now?”
“God wants your friend to become something the likes the world has never seen,” posited Daniel. “The slums of Calcutta helped Mother Theresa become one of the greatest human beings ever. In her relative comfort, your friend cannot envision the extraordinary being she is destined to become.”
“The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” quoted Maria. “Are you hinting I need to take better care of myself?”
“If you become a Christian, you will notice changes,” predicted Daniel. “Many of them you will have expected. The next part may come as a surprise. God will begin to transform you into the kind of life form that will walk with Him in Paradise.”
“He will take us as far as He can in this world,” understood Maria.
“Your allegiance to Him will thrust you into the battles of an unseen realm. Your mind will become an outpost armed with the weapons of a spiritual war,” affirmed Daniel. “You thought you were going to be made into a pleasant little house on the prairie. Instead, God plans to build a shining castle upon a high hill the whole world can see. He intends to come in and sit on its throne.”