Bradley, well what can I say, he had his mind well and truly blown and in a good way for a change! I firmly believe this book will leave all readers with something to ponder in the days ahead, come back to me if you don't. Another seriously well written and thought provoking short from this author, once again left wanting more and once again can't wait for the next.

There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt. I laughed, I cried. I thought it was a subtle dig at religion, which it isn't. It's just a wonderful story. A conversation with God. On a Tuesday (I should have read it yesterday). It's a story that's funny and poignant.

It really is time to put away any preconceptions about God and finally realise who you truly are.

Surprisingly funny, this extremely well-written short story will not force religion down your throat, instead, letting a lighter spiritual truth percolate slowly through the story. And it's only a dollar. Pass on that candy bar, buy a book!

A profoundly thoughtful, metaphysical piece wrapped around a refreshingly delightful, witty and truly engaging story. I loved it!

I like that the author is not being religious, and describing IT's voice to come from inside. I can sense the author's intelligence and wisdom all over.

Surprisingly funny, this extremely well-written short story will not force religion down your throat, instead, letting a lighter spiritual truth percolate slowly through the story. And it's only a dollar. Pass on that candy bar, buy a book!

A profoundly thoughtful, metaphysical piece wrapped around a refreshingly delightful, witty and truly engaging story. I loved it!

A workaholic named Bradley Michaels, unhappy and unsatisfied with life, sulking over an ex-girlfriend, hears God in his head one afternoon after work. The kicker: Bradley is an atheist.

Author Justine Avery presents a theological argument in the guise of a simple story about one man's conversion from disbelief to belief. The argument, more or less, is as follows: God exists, but not in the way we understand Him. Avery's Deity pities atheists who limit the idea of possibility, and He has even less patience for those who turn off their thinking caps and blindly believe in Him. "God wants us to think," Bradley narrates early in the story. Believers will be pleased at the forthright claim for God's existence; atheists will see an escape clause in Avery's hint that Bradley, who is otherwise so unhappy, converts himself to a life with a new purpose (God never actually appears, being rather a voice in Bradley's mind).

Naturally, disputatious believers and non-believers alike might find fault with Avery's Deist notion of a supreme being. When Bradley asks about the Bible, God responds, "Boring! Some dudes wrote it, they didn't even know me ..." Avery's God is not "religious", and so religious people, who demand rules for conduct and belief, might find Him insufficient. Atheists have argued for centuries that Deism -- the belief in a Creator who does not intervene in the universe that He created -- renders God pointless, an absentee Landlord who is never available when the plumbing needs fixing. To use the most horrible example: was God in the death-camps? If not, why not? At what point does God accept responsibility and care for His creations? If never, does that not argue against the idea that God is benevolent?

These, however, are old arguments that Avery asks us to set aside. For the most part, she is making her case to atheists. She argues that disbelief is limiting and even unreasonable, implying that Belief and Reason can, must, coexist. Even the most rigorous scientific theories cannot always be utterly proved. More than this, Avery also points toward William James' Pragmatist philosophy, in which the value of any truth depends upon its use to the person who holds it. What use has atheism provided to the heretofore miserable Bradley, who cannot even have a civil conversation with the girlfriend with whom he wants to reconcile? Avery's case is that belief opens possibilities, and that possibilities without begin with acceptance of possibilities within. Similarly: if disbelief limits possibility, codifying belief into sets of Rules does the same.

It is remarkable that Avery demonstrates these ideas in a simply-written story that takes no longer than 15 minutes to read. She avoids pretentious jargon, lengthy and verbose bickering, and stays on point. Her "God" is a genial and chatty Being, often described as "child-like". One is reminded of "Oh God!", the novel by the perhaps cosmically similarly named Avery Corman. You may recall the impish George Burns as God from the movie version directed by Carl Reiner in the Seventies. However, in that story, God (and Corman, presumably) is determined to make a supermarket manager an evangelist in a troubled world; Justine Avery carries no such agenda. She simply asks us to consider a life in which possibility grows with belief, like a flower-bed nourished by water and soil. Whether or not you believe in God before you read "Almighty", that's a positive message than can easily be put to use in whatever way seems best for each individual heart and mind.

5 out of 5.