Mother of Pearl; turning the grit of life of life into something beautiful; do you have it in you?
2Co 4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding [and] eternal weight of glory;
Pearls as a gift, have been considered from time immemorial, one of the most beautiful gifts a person can give. They convey the deepest of affection, and esteemed worth of an individual in the eyes of another. Any woman thus adorned seems to take on a new elegance and sense of refinement. A fitting tribute to the price the lowly sea mollusk must pay to bring forth such a beauty from the pain borne of its bosom. Not a gem dug out of the earth and requiring the polishing, cutting and shaping of a skilled artisan, but a work of beauty already exquisite in its perfection, coming forth from the heart of a creature whose soul has known pain in the deepest recesses of its being. It requires not the embellishment of human hand, for it is the secret work of grace wrought in hidden and dark places, away from human eyes forged in a furnace of friction, and covered with layer after layer of the mollusks own inner beauty, which we call, “The Mother of Pearl.” The mollusks inner shell is coated with this beautifully iridescent substance and it is this substance that gives birth to pearls and that is why we call it the mother of pearl. This message is a short work to remind you, that as a Christian, God has also placed in you the iridescent characteristics that can rightfully be called Mother of Pearl, and which also can create beauty out of havoc in your life.
A pearl is the product of an irritation which has been transformed by a creature whose intelligence is too minuscule to orchestrate such, but who by the grace of God, has been hardwired to overcome that irritation by covering it with its own self. Thus the irritation is transformed into a gem like object of rare and distinguished beauty. So it is that God’s children have the same ability hardwired into them, for His promise is that He works all things out together for good. (Romans 8:28)
Our title for this message is, “Mother of Pearl, turning the grit of life into something beautiful; do you have it in you?” I believe the answer to that question is a resounding yes, and to that end I present the following:
Have you ever noticed that two people with identical circumstances, often have vastly different responses. What makes the difference? For example let’s suppose Doubting Tom, and Praising Paul both had an accident and broke their arm, how would they respond? Tom would wonder why God loved him so little to allow such a thing to happen, Paul would praise God that there was a reason for God’s timing in the event and look for what God wanted to do or to teach him. Why is Tom a doubter and Paul a Praiser? We will try to address that issue in this short lesson. Before we move on I would like to make a brief but important point; “according to your faith be it done unto you.” (Mt 9:29) It has been my observation that people who want to be negative will always find fuel to feed their fire, while people who want to be positive will always find things for which to give thanks. Both groups of people will experience trouble in their life, one will go from problem, to problem, to problem, the other will go from deliverance, deliverance, to deliverance. Both will have difficulties in life that must, for a season, be endured. One groups journey will be sweeter, more joy filled, and song filled, the other will view life through the filter of their problems, and their life will be marked, by sorrow, sadness, and complaining. The difference is not in their external circumstances, but internally with how they deal with them. According to their faith will it be done unto them. Said another way, the spin you put on circumstances will in large part determine the outcome you receive.
As an example of how a negative view and predisposition can grossly and inaccurately color your life consider this Bible quote and the person who made it: “So Jacob said to Pharaoh, ‘The years of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my life, nor have they attained the years that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning.’” (gen 47:9) First, please notice he is already thinking of himself as a dead man. He says that he hasn’t lived as long as his predecessors, which on its face is true, but then again he isn’t dead yet! (Jacob lived another 17 years after he had made this statement! Gen 47:28) Jacob is speaking as a person whose life has been terrible and from his point of view is already over, how sad to be a child of God and think that way, because it not only brought Jacob sorrow but it was also totally untrue! Jacob views his life as one trial after another, and he makes that statement at a time when he should have been on cloud nine. His son Joseph, as far as he knew, had been dead for seventeen years, and now by a great miracle he finds out he is yet alive. Additionally, Jacob’s family had been facing the threat of starvation but now through the providential sending of Joseph to Egypt, not only would his family be spared, but they would be treated like royalty. His son was the prime minister of all Egypt! The first words out of his mouth should have been, “Praise God!!!” Instead he laments all the troubles he has had in life. Jacob was short on Mother of Pearl, he looked at life’s troubles, and was blind to God’s miraculous provisions. God was good to Jacob all his life, and in the midst of his greatest miracle Jacob’s outlook so clouded his life that he couldn’t even see the good God was doing. His blessings had been stolen, not in fact, but he had been robbed of his ability to appreciate them, and his ability to laugh. He didn’t need God to be any different to Him, what greater miracle could God have done for him - a dead son brought back to life!, what he needed was to have the scales lifted off of his eyes. Jacob spent his life coating his problems not with the Mother of Pearl, but with the Mother of Gloom. He could of had a beautiful pearl, (the irony of all this is he did have a wonderful pearl of a testimony), instead he offered Pharaoh a Pearl of gloom, doom, and despair. Jacob gave a bad testimony of God’s goodness. God told Jacob his name was changed to Israel (Prince with God), but the name never really stuck, because Jacob (cheater, low life) continued to look at himself as Jacob and not Israel. If you want to be happy and successful as a Christian you have to learn to see yourself as God sees you. If He says you are forgiven, and you don’t accept that and struggle with guilt what more can He do? Jesus already died, the price has already been paid, He doesn’t have to do anything more, nor will He. What has to happen is that you have to repent for not believing what He has said about you and for taking the devils spin on things. In short you have to repent for believing the devil more than God!
Moving on, lets talk about something tougher to endure than a broken arm, something much tougher, and we will see if even in the most difficult of life’s circumstances it is possible to put a spin on these circumstances that is capable of helping us to make it through such troubles with a song. In Luke 2:35 we find these words: “...Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also...” The angel Gabriel was speaking to Mary and telling her that the worst imaginable horror a mother could experience would be her lot to have to endure. A sword piercing the heart goes way beyond what we would call a broken heart, it speaks of a depth of suffering, that unfortunately too many have had to endure, but that can only be understood by those who likewise have passed through such deep waters. A sword piercing the heart, this is a word picture of the deepest and sharpest suffering imaginable, in Mary’s case it was the execution of her son, and the double agony of knowing He was guilty of no crime, but instead came as the gentle Lamb of God.
Parents are supposed to die before their children, that is the normal order of things. When it is reversed it brings the keenest of miseries. Such was Mary’s lot. Such was the lot of my wife’s mother. Helen Richardson was a devout Christian woman, who had a wayward son, that was shot several times at point blank range. His liver and spleen were blown out, and he hung on to life for three days. Three agonizing days. In that time his younger brother led him to rededicate his life to Christ, somewhat easing the blow of his death/murder. Helen was shortly thereafter hospitalized due to the enormous mental and emotional pressure put on her as a result of her sons murder. A sword entered her soul, and she could understand what it was the mother of our Lord went through, on that terrible day. For Helen the trauma of the murder was followed by the trauma of the trial where the murderer was given a light sentence because it was felt his actions were in part the result of his, “drinking problem.” A dead son, and no justice, a sword pierced her soul the second time. How can you put a good spin on something as terrible as the murder of your son?
For Helen the answer came in the form of forgiving, and praying for the man who murdered her son. It became her mission to win that man to Christ. She wrote the editor of a Christian Magazine, and paid for a subscription to be sent to her son’s murderer in prison. She turned poison into something beautiful, in the same way that certain mollusks turn grit into pearls. Mollusks, when a piece of grit, or a parasite gets inside them, work to expel the foreign object, if it can’t remove it, it begins to coat it with the same material that is found on the inside of it’s shell - Mother of Pearl. As the object gets coat, after coat, after coat, the grit becomes one of the most beautiful things in nature - a pearl. If the mollusk (oyster) does not have mother of pearl on the inside of its shell it cannot create a pearl from the grit.(It makes instead what is known as a calcium concretion. A hard mass with no aesthetic or other value.) So it is with believers, spiritually speaking we need to have Mother of Pearl as part of our being. Mother of Pearl is that spiritual quality that takes those hurts and experiences that cannot be expelled and begins to coat them with the grace of God. We begin to claim the promise that all things work together for good, and that in everything we are to give thanks. And in the worse case scenario, we view the murderer of our son/daughter as someone God especially wants us to be redemptive towards.
I cannot at this time say that the man who murdered my wife’s brother has become a Christian, we do not know, but I can relate that the editor of the Christian magazine my wife’s mother wrote to, was so moved by her story and example of forgiveness that he put it on the second page of the magazine. It went out to multiplied thousands of people, and only eternity will tell how many were touched and changed by that story, including the many in prison who also get and read that magazine. Helen Richardson had Mother of Pearl in her spirit, and that trial she could not remove God by His grace transformed it to one of the most beautiful things in heaven - the pearl of forgiveness. There are others who have had children murdered, and the poison that killed their children also winds up consuming them. Their life is lost, in a vain pursuit of vengance/justice, and they are so busy wanting the murderer “punished,” that they never again ever really enjoy life, because true justice is something you rarely find here on earth. If that were so all abortions would end tomorrow, all missing children would come home, everyone would be fairly paid, and only “bad” people would suffer from loathsome diseases. The enjoyment of life is not dependent on your circumstances, but whether or not when you encounter horrific grit you have the Mother of Pearl, to cover such grit with the grace of God and see it transformed into something wonderful.
Mother of Pearl, spiritually speaking are those actions where a believer who cannot change a difficult situation seeks to have it covered by the grace of God. Instead of complaining - they praise, instead of fretting - they seek sustaining grace, day in and day out they claim the promise that God will work it out for good. Like the Hebrew children they can say, even if the Lord does not deliver us we will not bow... We will not bow to the pressure to curse instead of bless... We will not bow to doubt and unbelief, but will continue to worship and trust... We will continue to serve God as faithfully and as full of trust as when things went the way we wanted them to.
Such actions coat hardship with a beauty that is legendary, and becomes an object of admiration not only to us, but to God, angels, principalities, and others with whom we come in contact with. Instead of saying, “I see the horrible thing that was done to you, etched in the lines of your face.” They stand in awe and say, “how can you be so pleasant, when something so terrible has happened to you?” At that moment, we have and open door to share our pearl of great price and God multiplies its beauty into the lives of others.
Yes, you do have Mother of Pearl in you, but you also have Mother of Gloom, with which of these two have you been coating the circumstances of your life? The truth is, you are the only one who decides what spin you will put on life’s circumstances. Whose report will you believe? The report sent from hell, saying nothing good will come of this. Or, the one sent from heaven, saying that your circumstances are a gift from God for you, that with His help you are to turn into a pearl. Understand that we are not talking about simply coping with life’s circumstances, but overcoming them. Helen Richardson didn’t cope with her son’s death she overcame it. Romans 12:21 says, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Just before that it gives practical examples of ways to do that, Romans 12:19,20 “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” There is something about blessing your enemies that supernaturally takes away the sting of what they have done, and in its place covers it with the Mother of Pearl. Instead of being under the cloud or influence of evil, you bring the shadow of God’s presence to it. Instead of being corrupted by evil, you overcome it. There is something about blessing God for your circumstances that takes away the sting of what they might naturally be, and instead of merely coping with them, you rise above and over them. You overcome them. You take authority over them, they don’t take authority over you.
Jesus said, have salt in yourself, in other words bring God’s flavor to the world and change it, don’t let the worlds flavor change you.
Grace, mercy, and peace.
Addendum:
Note to pastors: I was recently (Jan 2010) rereading this message, and on a whim I decided to look up again the term, "calcium concretion," sensing there might be something more there I needed to discuss in this message. I came across the following:
Molecules influencing natural biomineralization processes have been instructive models for choosing and designing chemical agents for industrial mineralization processes and, perhaps more importantly, in industrial strategies for the inhibition of mineralization. Vertebrate bones, teeth and invertebrate shells have been the most extensively studied. This report documents a naturally occurring and widespread biomineralization phenomenon, the invertebrate calcium concretions. These concretions may lead to the discovery of additional novel peptides, peptide complexes or other polymers that may have important implications to the initiation and inhibition of mineralization processes.1
This led to two thoughts that ought to be included in this message. The first is that there have been serious studies made on the creation of pearls, from both sides of the aisle, those who want to make pearls and those who don’t. Reading the quote I cited above, reminded me there are some very smart people who, quote, "perhaps more importantly, in industrial strategies for the inhibition of mineralization..." Quite honestly, these are intellects to which I cannot compare, and there goal is to prevent the development of pearl (mineralization). It reminds me of this text: Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]. In short there are forces at work that would attempt to sow tares of doubt, anger, resentment, at crucial crossroads of life where we can either begin to grow a pearl or a calcium concretion. In other words, it is not simply that we need to be careful about the "spin," we put on life’s experiences, but also need to be aware that there are other "voices," that would like to put a spin on life’s events also.
The second thought, is that I did not discuss cultured pearls enough. In truth very few gem quality pearls are found naturally occurring in nature. Cultured pearls are made when a perfectly sphereical shaped object is placed at the appropriate time in the mollusks life cycle that will result (hopefully) in the creation of a pearl. That God is a maker of cultured pearls ought to be beyond question. Joseph said, "you meant it for evil, God meant it for good." That is cooperative pearl making at its zenith. God not only causes all things to work out for good, but can and is often the initiator of those irritants in our life that lead to pearls. He removes us from our familiar surroundings on the sea bed floor, and for a season brings us into an enviroment for which we were not made, nor can we long survive in. He cracks us open with a sharp instrument, to get past our hard outer shell, and there in our soft vulnerable tissue He forces something in which we do not like, nor want. This cracking open is a usually painful process. Each of us, needs a different unique set of circumstances to crack us open. But is only as we are opened to the Master’s hand that he can introduce the irritant that will ultimately become an object of unsurpassing beauty. We need to focus not on the cracking open, or the irritant, but on the creation of a pearl that will bring honor and glory to God, and be reminded of the fact, that God only causes it to happen so that: De 8:16 Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;
(It might be helpful if you preach this message to bring an oyster to the meeting, crack it open, and with a pair of tweezers insert a small bb or something like it. All the while discussing what the oyster is thinking, and what you the pearl maker are thinking of.)
Blessings
1. Source: Chapter (Book) Invertebrate Calcium Concretions,Novel Biomineralization Systems
Harold Silverman, , Jody M. Myers, and , Thomas H. Dietz
Department of Zoology and Physiology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Surface Reactive Peptides and Polymers, Chapter 9, pp 125–138, ACS Symposium Series, Vol. 444 Publication Date (Print): November 26, 1991 Copyright © 1991 American Chemical Society
