Pearls and the Price of a Soul…
Thought 1
Pearls are nothing more than the hardened spit of mollusks.
Mollusks are a very large subgroup of animals that do not have a backbone. Usually, these creatures have a soft body that is covered by a hard shell.
A pearl starts when something goes wrong in the eating process.
The mollusk takes in something and it goes between the shell and the body of the mollusk. Most people think it is a grain of sand that causes a pearl. However, it could be a bit of food, a parasite, or even part of its own body that gets trapped.
The something out of place in the wrong way irritates the mollusk. It secretes a substance called nacre. As nacre hardens, it makes it a bit easier for the mollusk to deal with the irritant. Each time the mollusk gets irritated, it spits and adds layers to what will become the pearl.
In nature, the color of a pearl is influenced by the color of the shell of the mollusk that created it. Black or charcoal pearls are created by an oyster in Tahiti with a dark shell. Alternatively, the mollusk may naturally create conchiolin with pigments in it; conchiolin is a glue-like layer in nacre. These colors are then refracted in a crystal layer of calcium carbonate.
Society has gotten sophisticated enough that we can culture pearls and grow them. Sometimes, the farmers will add a bit of shell from another creature. Other times, they simply cut the mollusk two or three times. The wound is enough to irritate the mollusk without ever introducing a foreign body.
Real pearls are easy to tell from the fakes. Rubbing real pearls on your teeth gives a gritty sensation. Fake pearls will just slide across.
Thought 2
We all have those people in our lives. Them, the other…
They are the ones we find most irritating. We’d spit at them if we thought it would make them leave.
It might be that their personal shadows are the ones we fight. It might be that we cannot deal with their immaturity… or their arrogance… or their many words.
Whatever it is, we run and hide. When we cannot run and hide, we roll our eyes heavenward and brace ourselves.
Thought 3
Jesus tells a story about a pearl. It’s just two simple sentences (or one, with lots of dependent clauses). In Matthew 13:45–46, Amplified Bible Classic Edition:
Again the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a dealer in search of fine and precious pearls, who, on finding a single pearl of great price, went and sold all he had and bought it.
Synthesis
What if we saw the people we can’t stand differently? What if we saw them as potential Christians in the making? Not a good to church on Sunday and drink it up on Friday Christian, but a solid, authentic Christian in every setting…
What if instead of rejecting them because they irritate us we began simply praying over them with the nacre of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit?
What if we covered them not in how we see them but in how God sees that they could be through the blessings and promises of His Truth?
Would they begin to change?
Would they become less irritating?
Would they open themselves to the true power of Christianity in a right relationship first with Christ, then with others?
We may never know the cost of a soul or the worth it could have. God does. His challenge through Christ is clear in Matthew 5:44 (The Passion Translation):
However, I say to you, love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them.
And we know His Word has power. It is living and active. It cuts and wounds to separate out that which is not of Him to protect that which is.
