The age of miracles is not dead!Only last week, Clare Allen from
Rhondda, South Wales, took the lid off the family jar of
Marmite, in order to put some on her son's toast, when she noticed the face of Jesus Christ in the lid!
Mrs Allen's husband Gareth, 37, said he could not believe his eyes when he saw it. "When I first looked at it," he told reporters, "I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought yeah, she's right - that's the image of Jesus."
Mrs Allen said her 14-year-old son Jamie had also remarked on the likeness. She told the
South Wales Echo: "Straight away Jamie said 'that looks like God', and my other boys (Robbie, four, and Tomas, 11) even said they could see a face. People might think I'm nuts, but I like to think it's Jesus looking out for us. We've had a tough couple of months; my mum's been really ill and it's comforting to think that if he is there, he's watching over us."
Mrs Allen went on, "I often see Jesus’ face in a lot of things I do. And there are a few times I can think of when I’
ve seen the face of Jesus in a window. But he’s never appeared in my food before."
Hmmmm... (or, in this case, more appropriately,
Mmmmm...)
And what's happened to the miraculous
Marmite?
"The kids are still eating it," said Mr Allen, "but we kept the lid."
That, of course, is how all the best relics get a start in life - or
after life - or whatever...
Scarcely, you might argue, on a par with the Turin Shroud, but apparently it's not just through
Marmite jars (or, at least, their lids) that the Almighty is making his divine presence felt in our modern world.
Oh, no!Roger & Sheila have alerted me to the fact that there are many powerful manifestations taking place - often in seeming mundane setting of the domestic kitchen...
In 1994, for example, a Florida woman, Diane
Duyser, made herself a toasted cheese sandwich which turned out to be embellished with an image of the Virgin Mary...
The fact that it has never gone mouldy - despite being kept in a plastic box - has been credited as proof of its unquestioned holiness and the fact that, a decade after being grilled, Ms
Duyser sold her blessed sandwich to a casino for $28,000 is proof that, as P T Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Or, at least, once every ten years!
Prompted by the
Duyser holy-
toastie - or, maybe, inspired by the better-known miracle of the loaves and fishes - Ontario man, Fred
Whan, revealed that he's got a
fishstick in his freezer that, when it was being cooked (well, actually,
over-cooked) in 2003, got another of those Jesus portraits seared on to it's underside...
One can only marvel that such revelations can still occur in an age of reason and non-stick pans.
Then there's the church in Bangalore where
JC turned up on a chapati which, fortunately, was saved before it got totally immersed in potato and pea
sagu.
Then there's the case of Italian bar manager, Matteo Brandi, who, two years ago, found Jesus' face on an oyster shell...
Highlighting - by way of a change - a non-food manifestation, there was a wooden fence in a caravan park in Port
Germein, Australia, where a tree and a street light provide a nightly apparition of Mr Nazareth that, in 2000, was drawing crowds of wondering site-seers...
And returning to the Mother of Jesus,
she put in an unscheduled appearance in a Chicago underpass in the form of a curious stain on the wall that soon became the site of a shrine. Whilst the devout saw the
BVM, the local authorities put the appearance down to a "build-up of salt..."
Oh, ye, of little faith!
Visit the BBC News website to read more about
the Marmite Master and
other revelations including the story of non-practising Hindu,
Sewdutt Maunick, who saw the image of Jesus on a hawthorn tree as he relaxed in his garden in Burgess Hill, Sussex.
Martin Luther, where art thou when we need you most?
UPDATE [9:50 June 04 2009]: LATEST REVELATIONS!New wonders have come to life (via that 'gospel' authority,
The Daily Mail): in May 2008, a drinker spotted the face of Jesus in the foil of a bottle of larger...
...though whether the drinker is now on the wagon is not disclosed.
Here he is again, this time inside a Kit Kat bar...
On a dirty shower curtain (I immediately went and checked my own)...
And finally, for now, an alleged appearance on a pavement last month in Greensboro, North Carolina. Personally, my faith fails me here and I can't help wondering if the
Mail published a photo of the wrong pavement...
Or maybe it's just upside down...
Who knows? Anyway, if
you can see it you may be the very prophet this age of uncertainties is waiting for.
