What Would Jesus See

A couple of weeks ago, Marce Suarez of Anson, Texas, decided to cut off a low-hanging branch on an old mesquite tree that kept brushing his tractor when he rode by it. He pulled out the chain saw but it wouldn’t start. He got a handsaw but it wouldn’t cut the wood. So he tied a chain around the branch, attached it to the tractor, and gunned the engine. The branch broke off and he dragged it away. When he returned he saw an image in the wood where the branch had been, an image of the Virgin Mary. He built a small shrine underneath, and now friends and strangers have started coming by and leaving plastic flowers. Suarez doesn’t know why the image is there, but he hopes it helps as much rain as plastic flowers.

When Jacob Simmons and Gentry Lee Sutherland of Anderson County, South Carolina, got home from Wal-Mart, where they’d picked up some photos that the store had developed for them, they tossed the receipt on the kitchen table. Three days later, after coming home from a Wednesday night Bible class, Jacob looked down and noticed something was different on the receipt–the image of a face, which he says is Jesus Christ. His girlfriend agrees, saying, “Here’s my question to the doubters, who else has the power to put their face on a check-out receipt but Jesus?”

Gary Burrell of Moore, Oklahoma recently retiled the family’s shower using 3-inch stone tiles that had slightly different shades and textures. Not long after, he noticed that one of them had what looked like an image of the Virgin Mary. His wife Carol didn’t believe him until she went into the bathroom to look. “It stood right out,” she said.  Had her husband noticed the image of Mary while he was tiling the shower, she says he would have given her a more prominent spot. They plan to leave the tile where it is because they’re afraid it would be ruined if they tried to remove it. Meanwhile, she keeps looking for more images around the house. “I have to admit,” she said. “I do stare at the walls now, looking.”

On the way to work recently, Kent Hardison, who runs Ma’s Hot Dog stand in Kinston, North Carolina, noticed that kudzu had taken over a utility pole and made a mental note to go back and spray the parasitic vines with herbicide. Then he looked again. “I glanced at it, and it looks like Jesus,” Hardison said. “I thought, ‘You can’t spray Jesus with Roundup.’ ” He says many of  his customers think the vine is a reminder that God is watching over people. And perhaps that you should treat kudzu as you would like kudzu to treat you.

Lou Balducci of Mission Viejo, California, was ready to throw out an old rocking chair in February, but when he removed the seat cushion he noticed the image of Jesus in the weathered wood. Now, four months later, he’s decided it’s time to let someone else enjoy it, so he’s put it on eBay with a starting price of $25,000. He says it’s rare, is a museum piece, and it has “healing powers.” Oh yeah, and he’ll be glad to arrange shipping.

Alex Guillen of East El Paso, Texas, had 50 friends over on Saturday night for his 50th birthday when they saw an image begin to appear on a stone wall. They took photographs every ten minutes and when it was done they saw the image of the Virgin Mary. Oddly, each of the photos shows something a little different. In one, you can see the image of a goat head in the Virgin’s robes. In another, there’s a glowing red head that appears to have horns. And in another, there’s a number 5 on her robes, all similar to a Virgin Mary sighting in 1876. Well, they do say that everything old is new again.