It is said that you can find Jesus anywhere you look for Him, and some people take that idea to some unusual extremes. People have found Jesus in bread, spilled paint, oil shimmers and cracked plaster. A horseshoe crab shell, however, might be a new sort of divine messenger. That is, however, exactly where Cathy Rader found Jesus Christ.

According to Rader, a friend found the shell on Canaveral National Seashore in New Smyrna Beach and gave it to her as a gift. At first, she did not think the shell was anything more than an interesting find. “I looked at it and said thank you very much. I took it home and set it on my front porch to dry,” Rader said. It was not until a few days later that Rader would begin to see the shell as something more.

Rader had been doing devotionals in the morning and felt she had received a message from God. The following day, she spotted some odd markings on the crab shell sitting on the porch. “I went past it and I noticed something, and I looked and it looked like the face of Jesus.”

At first, the image provoked a smile and a laugh. “I kind of chuckled to myself and said, ‘That’s funny, it kind of does [look like Jesus.]’ We call him Jesus crab,” Rader said. Over the next few days, however, the image continued to get lighter and lighter. Then, one morning Rader looked at it and felt it had started to resemble an angel if viewed upside down and a Rembrandt painting of Jesus Christ when viewed correctly. Rader said the clarified image brought her to tears.

“I just feel so humbled,” Rader said. “I knew immediately that after I saw His face and I googled the Rembrandt painting, I go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s the face!’”

Cathy Rader has been facing numerous challenges as she tries to publish her photography book about New Smyrna Beach, and she says that the miraculous image on the crab shell is the sign she has been waiting for. “All my devotions every day would say, ‘Wait on me, I got this, wait on me,’” Rader said. “Then I got this incredible gift. It was shown to me when it was supposed to be shown to me.”

Rader is allowing the New Smyrna Beach Regional Library to display the shell in hopes of sharing the shell’s inspiration with others, regardless of their religious beliefs. “Even the people who don’t believe say, ‘That looks like the pictures of Jesus that I’ve seen.’ So maybe it’ll help with people’s faith. I hope so. I hope so,” said Rader. If nothing else, Rader has certainly enjoyed the minor miracle that was pulled from the unsuspecting sands of New Smyrna Beach. It just goes to show that God works in mysterious ways. What else could a picture of Jesus on a crab be called?