That night Mick prayed. He was playing Abbey Hill’s best golfer, Ray Caine, in a competition the next morning. Mick was a keen but hopeless 32-handicap hacker. He prayed. Not to win – no prayer could achieve that – but to avoid being humiliated.

The next morning, Caine was on the first tee, ostentatiously warming up. He curtly shook Mick’s hand then smashed his drive 300 yards down the middle of the fairway, following up with a clenched fist and triumphant ‘Yessss.’

Mick gulped. Suddenly, there was a ping on his mobile. An anonymous text that read:

Pride go-eth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18

Mick addressed his ball nervously: hands trembling, stomach churning, left leg jigging up and down uncontrollably. He swung and watched in mouth-gaping disbelief as his drive somehow raced 50 yards past Caine’s. Caine slammed his putter into his bag angrily.

Next, a short par three hole. A tiny green nestled on a narrow bank across a pond fringed by trees and flanked by steep bunkers.

Caine’s powerful tee shot soared heavenward, only to plummet deep into a bunker. He struggled to get down in five. Mick’s tee shot sliced high, pin-balled among the tree tops, just missed a pigeon and flopped onto the green, a mere inch from the pin. Mick won the hole. Caine swore and hurled his putter into the trees. Mick pretended not to notice, embarrassed by his outrageous fluke.

Another ping on his mobile:

I have escaped with the skin of my teeth. Job 19:20 read the mysterious text.

They continued. Caine watched as Mick’s miraculous good fortune continued hole after hole. His mood sank from supercilious arrogance to frustration, rage, and finally to abject surrender. Mick felt sorry for him. The mysterious texts made him feel guilty. Was his prayer being answered? If so, he hadn’t wanted this. All he’d wanted was to avoid humiliation; not inflict it on someone else.

At the seventeenth hole, Caine was only one ahead. He took a mighty swing on the tee but topped his ball, which scuttled low into bushes and was lost. Mick glanced at his mobile. Another text:

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take up the sword shall perish with the sword. Matthew 26:52

Mick won the hole with a shot that hit a fence, startled a rabbit, bounced against the pin and rattled into the hole. Caine was now sobbing quietly. With one hole to play they were level.

On the eighteenth tee, yet another ping:

And though I understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, yet if I have not charity, I am nothing. Corinthians 13:2

Mick knew what he had to do.

He deliberately threw the last hole with some well-disguised duff shots. He congratulated a relieved and faintly smiling Caine on winning. After all, it was only a game.