God has a peculiar way of teaching us the lessons of life, one such instance is this.

THE MESSAGE

Life changes, times change, people change, but the memories, they never change, they always remind us of the life we enjoyed, the times we cherished and the people we connected with. Every incident in our life has some meaning, some essence, some importance which we may not realize at that very moment sometimes but we do realize it in the course of time. These incidents are God’s way of teaching us the lessons to live in every step of our life. He never speaks  to us directly but these few incidents reminds us that there's someone up there helping us, giving us signs that he loves us and hears our prayers.

 One such incident happened with Thomas. Now who’s Thomas? Well Thomas or Tom, as he was known by his friends and family, was a very honest and humble man working hard every day to meet the needs of his family. His wife, Mary was a simple woman who loves her husband dearly and supports him in every phase of his life. He had two children - Samantha, the elder sibling who was also the smart one and Jacob, who only thought he was smart. But this story isn’t about them. This is about Thomas, who has never done any deeds of corruption in his life. He goes to office every day, earns little yet sufficient enough for his family but he has happiness in his life – something many of us strive for our whole life and still don’t get it. But even the most honest man can sometimes be struck by greed. That is what happened to Thomas one fine day.

That morning Thomas woke up as usual, freshened up and started getting ready for office. But he was happy, actually happier than usual. His children couldn’t make out the difference but his wife knew something was just not right.

 So Mary asked Thomas while he was having his breakfast, ”What happened? That smile hasn’t disappeared from your face since you woke up. You aren’t even complaining about the food? What’s wrong with you?’

“Huh?? What? Nothing’s wrong. The food is good by the way” replied Thomas with a smile.

But women, they just don’t believe you when you speak the truth - straight forward but tell them the same thing in a twisted way and they believe you. Anyways Mary wasn’t any different. She asked, “Is it that that new female assistant in your office you can’t stop thinking about?”

“What?? No!!! Are you crazy?” replied a shocked Thomas but the smile was still there.

His wife just smiled at him. She trusted him more than anyone in her world. And till this day he has never broken her trust. But why was Thomas so happy? No one knew. It’s a mystery yet to be solved. Every day he used to take the ferry to cross the river and then take the 6 number bus to Benjamin corner. As usual he took the ferry, crossed the river but after that something else happened. Instead of taking the 6 number bus he crossed the road. Then he walked into a narrow street. He kept walking through the markets. What exactly was he searching for? He took a turn to the left and walked for a while until he realized that this wasn’t the route, he should have taken a right from the square. When our mind is somewhere else instead of where it should be, we always end up taking the wrong turn or doing the wrong thing. Now Thomas wasn’t concentrating on the road, he wasn’t concentrating on the journey; his mind was more engrossed in the destination. But then it’s the journey to the destination that matters more than the destination. Ofcourse the destination makes you happier as was the case with Thomas after he walked backed to the square, took the right, walked for another mile and reached an almost white building with a tint of green.

So there Thomas stood in front of the building happily gazing at the signboard above which read ‘Win Win Lottery’. He went inside the building and walked straight to the counter like a person who’s totally sure he’s going to win today. He bought two tickets for a hundred bucks. The results were to be announced in the evening. This was a daily lottery thingy. Now after buying the tickets he went to his office. He was quite happy the whole day. As soon as the clocked struck 7 in the evening, he packed up immediately. He had to reach the lottery place by 7:30 p.m. he walked as fast as he could, took the bus, got down from it and walked to ‘Win Win Lottery’. There he was just in time to hear the results and he was quite surprised to see high ranked officials and businessmen also waiting anxiously as the results were to be announced.

“Why do these high class rich people even need to buy lottery tickets?”, he thought, “I guess you just can’t say ‘no’ to easy money.” Thomas was pretty confident that he would win the money though. As the results were declared for the double tickets, his heart was pounding in his chest. The first number was 7. He looked at his ticket just to make sure. “Yeah it was 7.”, he heaved a sigh of relief. The second number was 77. He looked at his ticket, looked back at the number screen for a while and then looked at his ticket again.

“No!! This can’t be.”, he said to himself in disbelief and rejection. He was astounded. It took a few moments for him to gather himself up. He thought he had cut the tickets with the number 7 and 77. But then he realized now that they were actually 7 and 70. He was really sad and crestfallen. He was never that sad. He never craved for easy money or corrupted money. Why was he so unhappy now? Well maybe because of the fact that he could have won lakhs of money if the tickets were right. But luck didn’t favor him. Or was it really luck? Because he was pretty sure he would win. Maybe it was just another bad day for him, you know, nothing goes right for you. Even the right goes wrong for you. Maybe Thomas was having one of those days. So after that, the next day Thomas was back to his normal life.

After about a week, on a Sunday afternoon, Thomas was reading a newspaper on the verandah when his son, Jacob came to him and asked, “Dad! Why were you so low last Tuesday? I never saw you that way. In the morning you were so happy and in the evening it was totally the opposite. This thing was bugging me a lot so I asked you. I kind of thought you went psycho or something.”

Thomas smiled and said, “Well son! I got a message that day, perceived it in the wrong way so I got sad and then when I actually understood the message in the last few days.”

“What message? Please stop talking like those ‘Matrix’ people. I am just an eleven year old. I don’t have the wisdom of a 50 year old.” said Jacob with a confused look.

“Hey I’m 48, not 50” said Thomas offensively; “alright, back to the point” he continued “remember I told you I lost the lottery. I had bought two tickets.”

“Well yeah, but those lottery tickets don’t really matter to you, right?” Jacob replied.

“Hmmmmm…but the previous night I saw a dream. And in the dream I clearly saw that I had won a lottery with the tickets 7 and 77. Although I am not into all these things, I went to buy the tickets just to try out my luck. I was sad that day because all the way till the results were declared I thought I had bought tickets with the numbers 7 and 77 when actually I had bought the tickets with 7 and 70.”

“Ok, that sucks. But what was the message that you got? Some kind of text message? E-mail? What?” Jacob asked.

“Well then over the next few days I realized that I am just not made for easy money or corrupted money. Through this whole incident God sent me a message.”

“Arrrrrggghhh…what message? Can you please cut the suspense and come right to the point?” said an annoyed Jacob.

“Alright! God gave me the message that you are one of my favorite children. Don’t ruin yourself with this easy or corrupted money. Because once you are in that web of greed you can never come out of it like those businessmen standing beside you at the lottery place. They can’t even let go that small amount of lottery money even though they are so rich. I didn’t understand then but I now understand it, clearly and completely.” explained Thomas.

“That means I’ll never get easy food.” said Jacob.

“Ohh! Why is that?” asked his father with curiosity.

“I once snatched my friend Paul’s tiffin and while I was about to eat it, I bumped and fell down and the whole food in the tiffin fell on the ground.” explained Jacob with a sad face.

“Now you should never do such things. They never bring you happiness. Even if you succeeded in eating the tiffin you wouldn’t have been satisfied.” advised Thomas pointing a finger.

“I know dad!! Because even if I do succeed to snatch his tiffin, I’ll trip and fall again.” said Jacob, “Ok bye dad! I have to do my homework.”

Thomas saw his son rushing into the house smiling at his innocence and then continued with his newspaper. He’s a happy man now.

So this was the message for Thomas from God. What message did you get?