Texts from Mum

I received a text message the other day from Mum. She had evidently changed her number and thoughtfully wished to make me aware. Strangely, Mum died two years ago, so unless there is a good phone signal in sheol, I suspect it wasn’t really from her. Had I replied, I think the conversation would have gone something like this:

Mum: Add my new number mum

Son: Oh? Thanks for letting me know, Mum. I have updated my contacts accordingly.

Mum: That’s great. You couldn’t lend me one hundred dollars, could you? I’m a little short at the grocery store.

Son: Why, of course, Mother! Shall I put it into the usual account?

Mum: No, could you send me it in Nike gift cards? And could you make it $300 just in case?

Son: Well, if you’ve run out of training shoes, I guess that’s what I need to do. No problem. Have you taken up jogging?

Mum: Yes, buy the gift cards and then send me the photo of the codes

Son: *Sends Pictures*

Son: Did you get them?

Son: Mum?

Son: Mum, are you ok?

Son: Mum, have you blocked my number?

The conversation never happened, because the number was blocked sometime between messages one and two, above. Had my Mother still been alive, she would not have asked me for money, even if she had needed it. A fraudster was simply messaging hundreds or thousands of random numbers in the hope that just one of them would fall into the trap.

Equally deserving of our pity are poor Roman Catholics who are taught that they may pray for the dead, paying for masses and lighting candles to ease their departed relatives' painful sufferings in purgatory and hasten their release to heavenly bliss. St Peter’s Bassilica in Rome, and many others like it, was funded by a far worse form of fraud than my random correspondent was able to offer. God shall repay 'Holy Mother Church' in due course.

And he cried out mightily with a loud voice, saying, It is fallen, it is fallen, Babylon that great city, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of all foul spirits, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunken of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich of the abundance of her pleasures. Rev 18:2-3, Geneva Bible