Barnabas

VII. PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

This text is based on the scripture Matthew 13:26.

In New Orleans, as in any port city, there is a large oyster industry. People shuck, boil, fry, and eat oysters by the tons. If you know anything about oysters, you know their outer shell is rough, and the edges have ridges and there is a tough structure keeping it closed shut so that it takes a rather sturdy implement to pry the ends open. I myself have opened clams and similar mollusks with a dull steel implement that resembles a toy shovel. Once getting it open, you realize that there is really nothing to an oyster other than some primitive internal structures and one rather large, soft, pliable muscle, which is the part that everyone eats. Sometimes, if you look closely, you find a pearl.

Some people raise oysters for pearls, and I really think they treat oysters, that were actually created by God, the way that God does with people. God realizes that pearls need to be sewn and at the same time protected. Hence the rough exterior. And those that raise pearls realize this about pearls and do not mind the rough exterior. Let me tell you, I wouldn’t trade those people for all the money in the world. They are precious because they realize that oysters are precious. As God realizes that we are special and precious commodities. Those people that raise oysters sacrifice so much so that the pearls of God are not destroyed, not by man, not by satan. They are true warriors, those who say “No!” when it counts, “Yes” when they can and can make out the road signs in the fog that so often cloud everyone’s existence.

These are patient people. They often go unheralded; yet continue to work even if unheralded. The ones who go through life, realizing it’s a struggle and do it anyway because they know that growing pearls for God is important and doesn’t matter how long God needs them, just that He does. These are the people who are willing to wait until the point where no human can handle it anymore. They’ll plug and plug and plug and get tired and keep going and rest for a bit, up and up that mountain toward perfection that awaits all in Christ. Because they are human they may reach a crag or a ravine and trip or even fall several hundred feet until they cry out, “Help me, God!!! I can not make it anymore!” and poof! God scoops them up and tells them, “My grace is sufficient for you.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) And gives us the strength to endure or opens an escape hatch for us to run through into His waiting arms until the next time we have such a crisis.

These people we should be grateful for. Because they realize not to give up on us. Because they know the rest of us are simply fools that need direction and wisdom to make it through. We are all diamonds in the rough, but nevertheless still diamonds. When you least expect it, after all that time in a crusty chalky shell, out comes the pearl.