“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
But you can't quite beat the brevity with which Jesus tells us about the Kingdom. The Kingdom is so valuable that it's worth everything we own. Everything.
I live in the United States and I'm guilty of buying into the consumerism culture. I can look around right now and count up possessions that cost well into the thousands of dollars (go ahead, I bet you can as well). But that's counting multiple items, each one just adding a portion of the whole cost.
But for one item, one small item to be worth more than what I have...that boggles my mind.
And a pearl too. Pearls are beautiful, they're probably my favorite of the precious stones. But let's face it, pearls don't really do much. Diamonds are at least hard and have many industrial uses. Pearls? Keep those away from vinegar or anything else acidic. The entire worth of a pearl is in its beauty and rarity.
Sure, we've commercialized pearls and can make them in whatever size we want. But a true pearl...that's rare and can cost well more than all my possessions put together. And we're talking possessions that are useful - computers and software to produce works of digital art, cars to take me places, shoes to keep my feet and posture happy - items with uses that justify their cost.
Pearls have no external use. No reason to own other than their beauty. yet that beauty was so worthwhile, so stunning that it convinced the merchant to sell all that he had to purchase a single pearl.
Think about it, all that he had. He couldn't buy and sell other items any more for all that he had to sell, he would never sell. He couldn't afford to eat for no meal will ever be worth the price of that pearl to him. Nothing, nothing at all for the merchant except his pearl.
That's the devotion that God calls us to. Nothing at all for us except His kingdom. Yes, Jesus does promise that when we seek first and foremost God's kingdom all these things will be added onto us but if we seek first in the same manner as the merchant....we won't desire for anything else to be added on. We'll have all that we could ever want: the pearl of great price.
I want to finish with the anecdote that sparked this blog post. I was at a sporting even the other day and noticed a ring on the ground. No one else noticed it, they just walked on by as if nothing was there. I picked up the ring, not wanting it to be damaged. It was exquisite, covered in diamonds most of the way around the band with a large hexagonal cut stone for the centerpiece. The detail in the white gold was marvelous - I wish I had had more time to notice the subtle nuances of patterns that enveloped the diamonds.
So there I am watching out for this ring when a man comes back, hurriedly looking all over. His demeanor was calm but it was the forced calm of bravery to keep another from crying.
I asked him if he was looking for something, he said "A ring." You should have seen the relief on his face when I returned the ring to him. Later on his fiance came up to thank me. She told me about the ring and who the designer was (Neil Lane for the females in my audience) and how she had only had it for a day or two and how it needed to be sized. Inadvertently I had become her hero for the day by simply noticing the ring.
Can you imagine what this world would be like if we searched for our bibles the way the groom-to-be searched for the ring? Can you imagine if we went up and thanked the people who brought us closer to Christ each day? The Kingdom is no diamond ring - it is a pearl of great price. Maybe it's time for us to start searching for it more.