The phenomenon is being hailed as a modern day miracle. But there are some who are just not buying into it. Whatever the reason may be, what’s happening at the St Demetrius church in Skopje, Macedonia is very interesting. The gold halos around the paintings of saints on the walls of the five-century old church have miraculously turned brighter, overnight. The paint is reported to be noticeably sharper than it used to be before. Some reports suggest that the soot gathered over all these centuries is simply falling off, to reveal the original colors of the paintings beneath. The phenomenon first began with the image of the Virgin Mary and soon spread to the other works of art.

The miracle of the Macedonian Church paintings is turning out to be quite a popular one. Several hundreds have gathered in long lines outside the church, hoping to get a glance. Even Archbishop Stefan of the Macedonian Orthodox Church and Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski paid their visits. Father Dragi Trpeski says, “I’ve worked as a priest for 26 years but I have never witnessed a miracle like this.” Several theories have been put forth, attempting to explain the event. According to local clergy, the famous warrior St Demetrius is unhappy about the recent drop in visits to the church. Apparently, the presence of nearby construction sites has blocked main entrances and resulted in fewer visitors. Head of the Commission for Religious Communities, Valentina Bozinovska, suggests, “This is a message that we must immediately return to moral values, family and children, to preserve ourselves from the decadence we are facing.”

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Karla Flores, a 32-year-old street vendor from Culiacán, Mexico can consider herself after she survived being shot in the face with a live grenade.

On August 6, 2011 Mexico’s “Miracle Woman”, as she’s come to be known, was selling seafood on the street when all of a sudden she heard an explosion. As she turned around to see what had happened, the woman was hit in the face by an object, and the powerful impact caused her to fall on the sidewalk. She felt a burning sensation in her face and when she touched the point of impact with her hand there was a lot of blood. Karla passed out after that, but luckily for her an anonymous passerby took her in his car and drove her to the nearest hospital. There she woke up and when the doctors asked her about the wound Flores told them she thought a stone hit her. But their investigations would reveal it was something a lot deadlier than a stone.

From the x-ray and tomography, doctors could tell some sort of projectile was stuck between her superior and inferior jawbones, and military experts called on the scene identified it as the live explosive head of a fragmentation grenade. It had been fired with a grenade launcher, causing the bang Karla heard, but it didn’t detonate when it hit her face. Still, the grenade was extremely dangerous, just one wrong move and it could go off killing everyone in a 10-meter radius. The hospital’s patients and staff were evacuated, and something had to be done to help Karla, who could barely breath with the projectile locked in the side of her face.

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Toby Elles, a 22-year-old from Lancaster, Britain, set off to make himself a late-night snack, but got a lot more than he bargained for.

After drinking a few beers with his housemate, Toby thought some bacon would make a great snack before hitting the sack, so he put it into the frying pan, turned on the oven and lied down on the couch. An hour later, he woke up to a house filled with smoke and, worse still, burned bacon. It was a true culinary disaster that could have had dire consequences.

But after scraping the bacon off the pan, young Toby Elles learned miracles can  be born out of disasters. The face of Jesus Christ was staring back at him, from the pan! The greasy image had eyes, nose and all the distinctive features of our Lord. Toby now thinks it was, no doubt, some sort of miracle, and decided never to wash the sacred pan. He’s even taking into consideration placing it in a glass cabinet, so it can protect him, in the future.

All I have to say is this: If this doesn’t prove the divine nature of bacon, I don’t know what will!

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