“That’s great,” she said, sorting through her purse.
He persisted, “No, I mean God really spoke to me. I
heard him. I can describe his voice. It wasn’t the deep,
echoing sound of a movie God; it was loud but calm.
Like an emphatic whisper, scary.”
“You mean, like the Godfather?” asked Suzanne, look-
ing up and smiling.
“I’m serious!” thundered an angry Avrom, storming off
into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of water. Twist-
ing off the cap, he threw back his head and downed
the whole 16.9 fluid ounces. In days past it would have
been a beer. But now he chug-a-lugs water when he’s
angry or scared.
He knew he wasn’t crazy, but he also knew this was
insane. God was talking to him.
Weeks went by without God speaking to him again.
Avrom began to think that he had been nuts. That it
was just some episode of emotional imbalance. Still,
sometimes, like after dropping the kids off at school,
he would try to make himself ready, but God didn’t
speak. Every day, Avrom woke up thinking about God.
Every day he expected to hear that voice, but nothing
happened.
Avrom started reading books about spiritual matters.
He read the Bible. He pored over Suzanne’s collection,
and he got volumes from the library. He’d discovered
so many opinions and ideas. Most of them still seemed
like people trying to make absurd stories plausible. Sto-
ries that were totally unsupported in modern life, for
which there was no evidence, and which all logic and
experience seemed to debunk. Yet intelligent people
defended the stories. They created myriad explana-
tions, allegories and metaphors to support their belief
in them.
He read one scholar that thought Abraham, his name-
sake, had been the central figure in Judaism, not only
because he was the beginning, but because he was the
one who had trusted God with absolute faith, unlike
Adam who had forsaken God for Eve.
Avrom began to have grandiose thoughts. Every day
he talked about his acquaintance with God to Suzanne.
Perhaps God’s will for him was to usher in a new era
on earth. Maybe Avrom’s faith was true enough for
God to trust him with this mission.
“Don’t say this in public,” she’d say, with a smile. But
she had started to worry. Was Avrom just emotionally
unstable because of pressures in his life, or had he gone
completely crazy?
It got worse, and Suzanne had insisted that Avrom seek
outside help. He wouldn’t. He knew that nobody would
believe him. Avrom needed proof to show the world.
That’s when God told him the numbers for the lottery.
One morning, as he awakened, a vision of a lottery
ticket formed in Avrom’s mind, on it he saw 13, 15, 23,
24, 25, 32. He heard God say, “Play these numbers.”
Avrom told Suzanne. She looked at him with that look.
It made him feel empty; she was fed up. But what could
he do? “Okay,” she said. She was angry now, “Go buy
the ticket, but if it doesn’t win, Avrom, you’ve got to get
help. What am I saying, ‘if it doesn’t win’? Maybe we
both need help!”
He drove down to the Pavilions on Sepulveda, but,
‘temporarily out of order,’ was lit up on the machine,
traveling across the screen like a movie title on a mar-
quee. So, he went to a little liquor store, took the card
and filled in the numbers that God had given him.
Avrom didn’t buy lottery tickets very often. He’d won
$54 once and $5 a few times over the years. But in his
whole life, he probably hadn’t bought more than 15
tickets. When he did play the lotto, he’d wait until the
morning to find out what the winning numbers were,
either hunting for them in the newspaper or looking
them up on the Internet.
But that night he and Suzanne had watched it on TV.
One after another, the numbers came up. The jackpot
was $84 million. There was one winning ticket, and it
was theirs. Suzanne just stared at him. Her anger was
gone.
Steel Notes Magazine
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