Brian and Linda “Lyn” Hershey have one potato chip that won’t get eaten any time soon. It has a likeness of Jesus Christ cooked into its surface.
Brian was poised to chomp down on the chip two weeks ago when his wife stopped him with a shriek.
“She just screamed, ‘Don’t eat that!’ and I thought, ‘What the heck.’ I was just eating my dinner,” Brian says.
Sitting across from him at a table in C R Bucks restaurant in Chambersburg, Lyn spotted the Christ-like image just in time to preserve it.
“I don’t know if it was the way the light was shining or what, but I just looked over as he was about to pop it in his mouth, and I could see it clearly,” she recalls.
Brian says, “We don’t usually look for Jesus in our food, but it’s there.”
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The image of Christ is obvious to nearly everyone who looks, says the couple, who live in Shippensburg. It resembles the famous painting by Werner Sallman that hangs on Sunday School walls across America and appears in many Bibles and other publications.
On the chip, the image is a head-and-shoulders view, with the head slightly inclined and Christ’s hair and robed shoulder in outline.
The couple stashed the iconic morsel in a foam dish with a clear plastic lid and say they plan to keep it.
Lyn says the package occupies a spot on an end table, beside a photo of her mother, who died 17 years ago.
Both Lyn and Brian think there may be some spiritual meaning attached to the chip.
“We both just accepted Jesus in the last six months, so I think it’s a sign that we’re doing the right thing,” Lyn says.
Her kids — Amanda, 13, and Dylan, 9 — think the message is “quit smoking.”
“We were talking about quitting smoking when we found the chip, so the kids think that’s what it means,” Lyn says.
Whatever the message — or even if there is none — the chip is certainly an interesting source of conversation.
C R Bucks owner Mike Smith says he saw the chip along with a number of other customers in the restaurant that Friday night.
“They showed it to a bunch of people and they all saw it,” Smith says. “I have to admit you can see the face. There’s no doubt about that.”
Lyn says people at their church — the Newville First Church of God — see the image, too.
“But everyone wants to eat it, or talk about eating it,” she says.