A Massachusetts man opened his garage and saw Jesus and, maybe, Mary looking at him from the stains of a pizza tray. From that “spiritual” experience he observed Ash Wednesday and attended his denomination’s meeting for the first time in 20 years.

People find Jesus and the “Blessed Virgin” Mary in all sorts of unlikely places: imprinted in foods, outlined in trees and in concrete, traced in plastic, cloth, wood, and rock, all supposedly by miraculous or mysterious means.

Such sightings, however, take on the character of seeing figures in the shape of the clouds. It takes a good imagination and not so much faith. Sometimes one wonders how much the possibility of appearing in a 30-second news clip influences these vain imaginations (see Romans 1:21).

What the pizza-tray owner should have seen on his dirty pan was the message kids write on the back window of dusty cars: “Wash me.” Maybe he saw something religious in the stains because of an unclean conscience.

People see Jesus everywhere around them, except for one obvious place: the Bible. In Scripture God presents the exclusive and totally accurate picture of Jesus of Nazareth, promised Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, Lord and resurrected Savior.

When Scripture is rejected, however, it appears that the religious impulse in the human heart refuses to be squelched and therefore imprints itself wherever it can find expression. Even on a pizza pan.

Reading the Bible won’t get you on the nightly newscast, but it will, if obeyed from the heart as the infallible word of God, get you into heaven.

Meditating on Scripture and doing the divine will revealed therein won’t make Jesus pop up in the crockery, but it will restore in every heart the divine image in which we were created.

After all, isn’t it better to have Jesus stamped in the heart than on a pizza pan?

“[You] have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator”

(Colossians 3:10).

Reading the Bible won’t get you on the nightly newscast, but it will, if obeyed from the heart as the infallible word of God, get you into heaven.–  by J. Randal Matheny