What the Pearls Teach Us

Part II


Beautiful Through Suffering




How lovely are treasures hidden beneath the lessons that Jesus taught when we study them! I often imagine myself at the scene where He taught and take in the richness of it all. Remembering that the pearl of great price, He spoke of in Matthew, chapter thirteen, is the church let us glean more of what He meant when He compares us to a pearl.

A pearl is formed from the suffering of the oyster. A foreign object such as a piece of sand makes its way into the soft tissue of the oyster and cannot be expelled. To protect itself the oyster begins excreting a crystalline substance around the intruder. As long as the foreign object is present, the oyster will continue secreting the substance until a lustrous pearl is formed. In freshwater pearls this process takes years.

As we previously learned, the La Peregrina (incomparable) pearl is a most sought after gem and its beauty has captivated the likes of Phillip II of Spain, Napoleon III and Elizabeth Taylor. Its color is pure white, purple or a peach-pink. There are a multiple of hues of these colors with their beauty indescribable. These gems not only have an outward beauty but they have a deep inner glow.

Comparing the church to a pearl, we are reminded that the church was born out of the suffering of our Savior. But Jesus not only suffered once for us, He continues to suffer for His beloved bride when we are wounded. When others hurt us it hurts Him also. How intimately involved He is when one of us grieves!

As we suffer and yield to the suffering, He is producing something beautiful deep within and around us to make us more and more beautiful as the pearl illustrates. We become more Christ-like as we allow Him to do His deep mysterious work in and through us in the midst of the suffering ~ for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. ~

Child of the Living God! Would you know that you are becoming more and more beautiful to God, before the angels to your fellow believers, and to the world? Learn the lessons of the pearl of great price. God is using your sufferings as He suffers with you to make you glorious in His sight!


~ For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us ~





Scripture References
2 Corinthians 4: 17
Romans 8: 18