Concrete salvation

The Lord works in mysterious ways, or so the old saw goes. One of the eternal philosophical questions regarding religion is the seeming reticence of God; why doesn't God reveal itself to us? Why must we rely on faith without explicit proof? It's a question that has been asked, and answered, countless times, and it has been on my mind again for the past day, since I just finished reading "The Officers' Ward", a book about the real-life experiences of WWI French soldiers residing in a special hospital ward reserved for those who have been inflicted with massive facial injuries. In the book, one of the residents is devoutly religious, and understands his relationship as God as one based fundamentally on mystery, with man having been given the capacity to wonder and ponder the great questions of the universe, but not the faculties to answer them with. The only answers reside with God, and they may never be revealed to man. Instead of expecting God to peel back the obscuring layers of existence, he argued that man can expect nothing in the way reciprocity. Good behaviour doesn't purchase answers; God isn't a trader to be bartered with: "[Penanster] made a distinction between believers, among whom he was proud to number himself, and the merely superstitious. 'The first give,' he would say. 'The second give in order to receive.'

But what God gives us are clues, signs, sprinkled about to let us know of its existence. And it was during my stay in Helsinki that I stumbled across another hint of God:



I puzzled over this for some time, wondering why God owned a gas station, or was suffering from bad gas, when it finally struck me that it wasn't the possessive form at all, but was actually a contraction for "God is Gas".

I was stunned. I immediately began to cast my eyes around, looking for any other religious iconography that was related to the automative, petroleum-related realm. And within a day, I found it:


Look closely (click to enlarge). Who do you see? Quite clearly, it is the Messiah, God's only son, who has left an imprint on the carpark of the Tenispalatsi movie theatre in Helsinki. I found myself reeling. Jesus, in Helsinki? And what's more, comprised of motor oil? I feel a new site of pilgrammage is at hand.