Jesus of Walmart

            Did you see this last week?  An engaged couple in Anderson County, South Carolina, says the face of Jesus showed up on a receipt from their local Walmart.

            You can see the receipt at http://www.wyff4.com/r/28568416/detail.html.  I’m normally pretty skeptical of these sorts of things, but I have to say that the picture in question does look like a face, and the face does resemble the pictures of Jesus that you see in our society.

            Frankly, I don’t know what to think about this.  On the one hand, as I said, I tend to be pretty skeptical about these things, and I’m pretty sure something like that could be faked.  On the other hand, the article does not give any reasons to believe that the couple in question has actually faked it or would fake it.  On the one hand, we have no idea what Jesus actually looked like, so even if this is a face, there’s no way to know whether it’s actually the face of Jesus.  On the other hand, it seems likely that, if an image of Jesus was to appear to someone, that image would be in a form that would allow the person to whom it appeared to recognize it.

I don’t know why Jesus’ image would appear on a receipt at Walmart, but there are a lot of things that I don’t understand.  I’m not saying I believe that this actually was the image of Jesus Christ, but I’m not prepared to totally rule out the possibility, either.

            Personally, I’ve never seen an image of Jesus on a Walmark receipt, or on anything else for that matter.  I have seen images of Jesus, though.  They’re all around us.  The image of Jesus is in the beauty of a sunrise.  The image of Jesus is in children playing in the park.  The image of Jesus is in people helping each other and sharing with each other.

            The Bible says that each of us is made in God’s image.  As Jesus is the divine Son, part of the trinity, that means we’re also made in Jesus’ image.  We could, then, say that the image of Jesus can be seen in everyone we meet, no matter who they are.

            If seeing the image of Jesus on a receipt helps someone believe, that’s fine with me.  We don’t need miracles to see the image of Jesus, though.  We can see the image of Jesus all around us, if we only open our eyes and take the time to look.

            In fact, if we look really closely, we may even be able to see the image of Jesus the next time we go to Walmart.