This is how it was, dearly beloved. Rajid bought a ticket in the lottery. Goodness knows I had preached many Sundays on the sin of gambling, but Rajid bought a ticket. And he won. He won. Forty dollars – not a lot of money you will think. Not a lot of money to start all this fuss. But the deeper iniquity is this. Rajid believed God told him to buy the ticket, and Rajid believed God told him how much he would win. That is how it started.

On Sunday Rajid walked to the lottery shop first thing early. He put five extra dollars in the collection plate that morning and took his wife out for lunch.

But that was not the end of it. A quiet week went by. Two, three weeks. And then Rajid again heard God speak, telling him to buy a ticket in the lottery. When he’d bought the ticket, he believed he heard God again, telling him he would win one hundred times what he’d won before. This is where the trouble deepened, dearly beloved. It deepened one hundred times.

Rajid was in business with his brother Sandip. Early each morning one of them would drive over the hill with the fruit and the vegetables from the Wairarapa. They did well selling in the city, but their truck was old and too small now and starting to be trouble. That week Sandip found a bigger newer one. It was a good price, but more than they could afford: nearly four thousand dollars more. So Sandip was alarmed when Rajid told the owner they would buy the truck on Monday. Where would the money come from?

On Sunday morning Rajid walked to the lottery shop first thing early. He put twenty extra dollars in the collection plate, and on Monday he bought the truck.

Sandip was eyes wide amazed. “Where did you get that money, brother?” he asked, “I thought you would be apologising today! To the man, to me. Apologising you should be!”

“God gave it,” was all Rajid would say about the money. Sandip was not very religious himself, but he liked the thought of God giving money.

And that would have been that. Except, dearly beloved, that it never is. A conspiracy of events was waiting around the corner. A quiet month went by. Two, three months. Then it happened suddenly. The building Sandip and Rajid worked from was put up for sale and they were told to move. But Rajid again believed God was speaking, again telling him to buy a lottery ticket. “I am thinking God wants to buy us this building,” he said.

Well. Four thousand dollars and a truck, that was one thing. A four hundred thousand dollar building; quite another. It was Thursday night. The owner demanded a definite agreement by Friday, signed and witnessed.

“Subject to finance?” they hoped.

“Subject to nothing,” was the reply.

“I will sleep upon it,” said Rajid.

“You do not have the money,” argued Sandip. “You will lose us our new truck, you will lose your own home. Your wife will be on the street. We will be bankrupt.”

But next morning Rajid believed he had again heard the voice of God, a voice again promising one hundred times more! He signed.

Friday passed, dearly beloved. Rajid’s wife was not well. Saturday came. Rajid went out for a duck at cricket. On Saturday evening when Sandip visited, Rajid did not even answer the door.

And on Sunday morning Rajid walked to the lottery shop first thing early.