What does it take to change?

What magic enables that peerless wonder that is the transformation of a human heart?

And why might one heart undergo this miracle, while others do not?

This is a story of contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, penitence and hard-heartedness, the pliability of youth and its absence.

And it's a story about hope,

gained and cherished, but threatening to fly away.

I'm Justin Gerhard.

Welcome to Holy Ghost Stories. The flags of Judah whip and wave, Enlivened by the wind that blows atop Mount Zion

across the walls of its capital. Jerusalem, the city of David.

Men and women, children too, smile and point, gazing at the spectacle of hundreds of

Levites in shining white linen, swords at their sides, alongside thousands of armored soldiers

arrayed in formation fanned out around the temple. Look at the commanders, says a wide-eyed father, perhaps.

His little girl finds one among the troops, and then another.

They bear the very weapons of King David.

She looks up at him, incredulous, but David has been gone for 300 years.

Yes, but we keep his spears and shields and quivers in the temple for days like today, days when kings are made. The man smiles at his daughter

and looks back to the temple. Perhaps this king will be different.

This is the prayer of many citizens of Judah. King Ammon was, by any measure, an evil man.

Assassinated weeks ago in the palace after just two years of reign by his own conspiring servants, men who had had enough.

Looking down on the gathered throngs, the temple of Yahweh. Built three centuries ago by Solomon,

it is a masterpiece of gold and stone, cedar and

onyx, turquoise and silver and bronze. Or better, it was a masterpiece. The years have not been

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