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Woman sees message of hope in bottle of hand lotion
By Tim Bousquet
The Daily Citizen
Friday, April 16, 2004 12:43 AM CST
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| Brenda Jackson awoke one day to find Jesus on her bedside table.
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When Jesus showed up in Brenda Jackson's bedroom, she was as surprised as anyone.
"I don't go to church like I should," she said. "I work on Sundays. I don't have a clue why this happened to me."
But two weeks ago Friday, Jackson awoke with a strange sensation.
"First thing in the morning, I was still in bed and my eyes were just drawn over to the dresser," she explained.
"And there He was."
There, to the right of a Mickey Mouse figurine and a clock, behind her Bible, sat her bottle of Elizabeth Arden hand lotion, just as it has every other morning. But unlike other mornings, the lotion on the sides of the upper portion of the half-empty bottle had formed into an image of the Savior.
"It looks like any picture of Jesus I've ever seen," said Jackson.
Jackson shook her husband Lloyd awake.
"You've got to see this," she said.
"I didn't even have to tell him what it was. He put on his glasses and took one look and said, 'Oh, my goodness!'"
Jackson lives along a remote White County lane in an idyllic glen just beyond an ancient cemetery. She's an unassuming woman with a broad smile, evidently content with her flower garden, her bric-a-brac and her Jack Russell terrier.
Asked why Jesus would appear to her, she became thoughtful before offering a partial shrug.
"This is not about me," she said after some consideration. "I wonder why it did happen to me, and I feel like I have to spread this. I want to show it.
"A lot of bad things are going on in the world, and it's getting worse," she continued. "He's trying to present Himself. He's trying to make us aware that there is something above that's more important than what's going on in our day-to-day life, something more than all the bad in the world."
A clerk at Wal-Mart, Jackson has taken photos of the image and shown it to her co-workers and friends.
"Everyone is astonished," she said.
Jesus is remarkably persistent. After two weeks, the lotion hasn't oozed down the side of the bottle, the sun hasn't faded it. Jackson hasn't touched the bottle, although she has begun to pick up the neighboring Bible a bit more than she had.
"I'm a firm believer, and this has made me an even stronger believer," she said.
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