Friday Wisdom – Lottery

Interestingly, you can’t buy a lottery ticket here in Nevada. We don’t have one. You want to gamble, you go to a casino. Last week I had to take a trip into California and they have lots of places to buy lottery tickets so here’s what I learned:

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

Did you hear of the pig that bought a lottery ticket? He wanted to become filthy rich.

The odds of you dying on the way to get a lottery ticket is greater than you actually wining.

I knew a guy who won a million dollar lottery. He said he gave a quarter to charity. Now he has $999,999.75

I just won $10 at the lottery office. Someone asked if I wanted to buy a ticket, I said, “no.”

God just answered my prayer of winning the lottery. He said, “no.”


There was a man named Joe who lived in the big city in a small dirty apartment house. One day he thought, “If I could just win the lottery, I could give half to charity and still have enough money to buy a big house in the country and leave this crowded, dirty, noisy city behind.”

So Joe came up with a plan. He read in the Bible, that if you ask God enough, God will give you what you want. Joe’s plan was to getup every morning at dawn, go to the roof of his building, face the rising sun and pray to God that he might win the lottery.

So every day Joe looked up the exact time of sunrise, set his alarm and was on the roof on his knees facing east just as the sun came over the horizon. Each day he prayed the same prayer, “Dear God, please let me win the big lottery. I promise to give half to charity. Amen”

He did this faithfully everyday, rain, shine, wind, sown, cold, heat, fog — no matter what, he said this same prayer every day for two years. Then one cold, foggy fall day, just as Joe finished his prayer, the fog parted and a heavenly beam of bright warm light fell on his face, a booming voice from the sky said, “Joe, met me halve way on this deal … buy a ticket.”

Unknown's avatar

About Andrew Reynolds

Born in California Did the school thing studying electronics, computers, release engineering and literary criticism. I worked in the high tech world doing software release engineering and am now retired. Then I got prostate cancer. Now I am a blogger and work in my wood shop doing scroll saw work and marquetry.
This entry was posted in wisdom and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

22 Responses to Friday Wisdom – Lottery

  1. Oh, that silly Joe!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Dave's avatar Dave says:

    “Amen” to the first “God” joke (which is not really a joke). And how ironic Nevada doesn’t have lottery games. I thought every state did.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Nevada’s probation of lotteries goes back the founding of the state in 1864 when it was made illegal in the state constitution. People would like to change it, but turns out it’s not that easy to change Nevada constitution and you have major gambling interests against a state lottery.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Buying lottery tickets is a big thing here in my state (PA), but I’ve never bought one. However, someone in our area just won $3 million. I’d say she’s lucky but she has a very ill husband with an incurable disease, so I’m just happy for them.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Hahaha! Buying a ticket doesn’t increase your odds of winning by very much.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I didn’t know that Nevada didn’t have a lottery. Go figure. 🙂 Have a great weekend.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. jfwknifton's avatar jfwknifton says:

    What an excellent story!!

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I’ve never bought one. But I have taken chances…

    Liked by 1 person

  8. This was GREAT, such a funny ending. I needed a good laugh. Thanks…

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I’m so thankful this wasn’t about changing the clocks this weekend!

    Liked by 1 person

  10. PiedType's avatar SusanR says:

    “The odds of you dying … ” cinched it for me.

    Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.