The Jesus Story

"... the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city..." - Acts 20:23

he first time it happened it was in the classroom.  I was pickin’ trash up off the floor after all the students had left at the end of the day.  For no particular reason I happened to turn a scrap of magazine over in my hand before droppin’ it into the garbage can an’ low and behold what do you figger I saw?  Yup.  Jesus.

I don’t know how it got there.  Probably some student used the cut-out on his or her presentation board and it flaked off and got left on my classroom floor.  But there it was in my hand, a ragged scrap of paper with a photographic-image of Jesus hanging on the cross printed on it in brilliant grayscale.  I stood there for a long moment, my hand poised over the trashcan.  Then I realized I just couldn’t do it.  I just couldn’t throw Jesus in the trash.  Not even a scrappy magazine cutting of Jesus.

Above the dry-erase board in my classroom there were some clips so I reached up and slipped Jesus into one of the clips.  And there he stayed for some time.  I’m not quite certain when he disappeared (probably during interim cleaning or some such occasion) but it wasn’t before students on numerous occasions made audible inferences about me and my spiritual positioning based soley on the Jesus cut out hanging there.

Before Jesus disappeared from the dry-erase board clip, however, there was another incident.  This time it was behind the Atomic Cycles bicycle shop in Van Nuys.  I had ridden in to participate in the Tuesday Night BMX cruise the shop’s owner, Paul, coordinates.  We all waited in the parking lot behind the shop while Paul closed up and lo and behold what do you suppose transpired?

Let me tell you.  As I was loitering in the parking lot, its disintegrating asphalt layers broken by weed-choked cracks, I noticed a reflective flash from amongst the blades of green.  I leaned over and withdrew a tiny object from the crack’s resident clump and found myself in possession of a tiny redwood necklace-style cross adorned with a simple metal frame.  Now, I’m not much for simple crucifixes, bein’ leary of Tamus an’ all that, and I was ready to toss the jewelry back down into its parking lot hiding place but then a notable event happened.  I rolled the cross between my thumb and forefinger and, as the charm rotated, guess what was revealed to me that was adorning the side that had been hidden from me?  Yup.  Jesus.

There he was, in extreme miniature, cast out of some shiny metal, arms outstretched across the tiny cross I had picked up from the parking lot.  Again I stood there for a long moment, my hand poised to flick the object back into the weeds pressing upwards from the cracked parking lot.  But I just couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t toss Jesus away like that.  The other BMXers chided me when I told them what was going on, of course, but I slipped Jesus into my bicycle bag and carried him there until that bag was lost years later.

However, my story ain’t finished.  Jesus showed up yet again.  One day some students in my classroom, boys, were attempting to operate a below the radar ruckus but their stifled giggling and frantic gestures between one another quickly brought down my wrath.  I saw they were passing a piece of paper between each other, placing it back and forth on one another’s desks where the recipient would quickly attempt to bestow it upon another participant in the fracas.  I confiscated the missive without breaking teaching stride, much to their curious glee I noted, and when I looked into my hand to determine what I had picked up, guess what I saw?  Yup.  Jesus.

The young fellers had been passin’ back a forth a Catholic prayer card.  You know, one of them Jesus, the Divine Mercy “Jesus I Trust in You” type cards.  And there on the card, in full brilliant color, were Jesus descendin’ from the clouds, his heart shootin’ forth them beams of spiritual illumination.  The boys had obviously been passin’ it back-and-forth because none of them were comfortable hangin’ onto it but none of them had the nerve to dispose of it in some way either.  And so it came to be in my possession.  And I don’t have a very good track record with these things as you’ve probably noted.

The culprits eyed me with humorous anticipation, obviously waitin’ to see what I would do with the object that they themselves had been hard pressed to deal with in what felt to them an appropriate manner.  And again I stood there, this time with the Jesus card in my hand, considering what to do with it myself.

Finally, I looked up at them and rolled my eyes, sayin’, “Sorry, gentlemen, but I just can’t throw away Jesus” and I slipped the card into my breast pocket and continued with class.

Driving home that day I found that card in my pocket and, for lack of any better solution, I slipped it into the molding on the dashboard of my car.  Where it still sits, Jesus eyeing me speculatively every time I drive, his hand raised in holy gesture and the Heavenly beams of comfort shining forth from his heart.

And the moral to this story is that “you never know what it is you’re going to pick up.”

Okay, okay.  It’s probably more something along the lines of “when Jesus is trying to get yer attention, it’s unmistakable.”

Yup.