Some people actually believe God struck a church with lightning, burning nearly everything inside… except for some artwork that He just really wanted to save.

FOX News and some Christians are ignoring the fact that Tuesday’s fire at historic First Baptist Church near Boston was simply a natural disaster and are instead focusing on a painting of Jesus that survived the blaze with surprisingly little damage.

A lightning strike reportedly ignited a massive inferno Tuesday night at the 150-year-old First Baptist Church in Wakefield, Massachusetts, destroying almost everything inside — but amid the rubble, crews miraculously found one painting survived the hellish flames. A painting depicting Jesus Christ — standing in a white robe with hands, bearing the marks of crucifixion, extended — survived nearly untouched with only a few drops of water on it. The painting hung just inside the church’s front doors. “It’s a beautiful sign of hope and a reminder that Jesus is with us,” church member Maria Kakolowski told Boston 25. “I am personally just taking it as a sign and a reminder that the Jesus, the Christ that we serve is still alive and even though our church building is gone, our church is here. The God that we serve is still here.”

Wakefield's historic First Baptist Church was ravaged by fire Tuesday evening. But this painting of Jesus was somehow left unharmed by fire, smoke, or water. https://t.co/5qj2vIA29s pic.twitter.com/9wJF1OjmJn — The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) October 24, 2018

“Jesus is with us,” said a member of a church that just burned down. (Seriously, wouldn’t you rather have seen the painting go and the building stay?) The FOX News piece doesn’t even quote anyone discussing the possibility that this was a natural disaster, or that the painting’s survival could be attributed to anything except God,. But they did quote a pastor who witnessed the destruction describing its genesis as a “fireball in the sky.”

Interim pastor Norm Bendroth told Boston 25 that he was settling down to watch the Boston Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series on Tuesday night when he saw “a fireball in the sky.” “It just went up like a tinderbox. It’s a building built in 1870 and it’s a balloon-style so one (sic) the fire starts you know the whole building just went up quickly,” he said.

If God exists, maybe He’s trying to send a message to believers — and it’s not that they need to take care of this painting of a white Jesus.

