Holiness Burns

The desire to see the resurrected Lord Jesus with one's very own eyes has a long and respectable tradition, starting with one of Jesus' very own friends. I speak, of course, of Doubting Thomas, whose one claim to fame (poor guy) is for missing out on one of the Lord's first live appearance post-crucifixion, and then offering up this classic response when his fellow disciples told him about it: "Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it." (OK, those may not have been his exact words, but they might as well have been.) Frankly, I think most of us can relate.

Fortunately for Thomas, he got his chance — Jesus appeared to him later in the flesh, and he believed. The rest of us, unfortunately, have to make do with stuff like this.

Well, I'm sorry, but the bottom of an iron does not the Shroud of Turin make (although admittedly it might do a good job of smoothing out any of the relic's wrinkles).

To be fair, I have a superstitious streak myself, so I guess I can't make too much fun of people who take these "appearances" seriously. I mean, I may not see Jesus in inanimate objects, but I have to make a conscious effort not to get nervous when I get an offer for a pre-paid cremation in the mail. (I think I'm up to at least five of them now. Woo-hoo.) Never mind the time I pulled into a parking space and found that the car parked next to me belonged to a coroner. I believe that was in the same week of getting one of the pre-paid cremation offers, too. Fun.

But it does seem to me that there's a fundamental difference between alleged omens and dubiously shaped burn marks on potato chips, pancakes and now this iron. I don't know what the difference is yet, but I'm working on it.

(By the way, isn't it weird how Jesus mostly appears in food form? Then again, he did say, "This is my body, take and eat," which I guess is weird enough in itself. But still. The Bread of Life and the Pancake of Life so don't have the same ring.)

On another note (yeah, I know, finally!), how does one score a job where you get paid for digging up bizarre "news"? Not to mention making up your own statistics in support of your story.