I came across a peculiar story about a 400-year-old granite slab being auctioned off on eBay, that purportedly bears an image of Jesus on the cross (see photo). This falls in the category of the pancake Jesus, the Virgin Mary grilled cheese and the Fish-Stick Jesus.

While I don’t think any of these counts as a modern-day theophany (from the Greek, theophaneia which translates “appearance/showing of God”), God can speak through stones if He so chooses.

Check out these verses from Luke 19:

In the story, as Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, people began joyfully praising God, saying “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

The Pharisees, known for sitting on their hypocritical high horses, said to Jesus: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”

And, (I love this), Jesus replies back to them: “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Some 2,000 years later, I really do have a stone that cries out. It’s a fist-sized stone that sits on my deck, with words painstakingly written by a five-year-old. A year ago, my daughter Lydia, then 5, took a black Sharpie marker to the rock, drew three crosses, wrote the words “God loves Lydia and you, too” and gave it to me as a gift.

That’s a stone you won’t find on eBay, and the message is as priceless as the girl who penned it. Stones really do cry out.