Lessons About God’s Love from a Pearl Farm
Last year my mom and I visited a fresh water pearl farm in Tennessee. Just to give some context, I will tell you a little bit about a recent health trial I went through…I’m sure we all have similar things we’re going through and God has much to teach us and bless us with through these kinds of trials.
This trip to the pearl farm occurred right after I’d recently gone through some very difficult health trials with histamine toxicity, and had suffered much, but gained a much deeper relationship with God as a result, and I’d just come out the other side, reaching stability (no more tachycardia or dangerous dips in blood sugar levels that used to land me in the ER).
I’d learned to manage my symptoms with herbs and supplements that lower histamine, and God had used the experience to make my faith more solid and founded on the Word as the whole experience had driven me deeper into the Word.
I was just at the point where I could travel and leave the house for more than just a short distance.
Right after this health storm of several years, when things had finally calmed down, I take a trip to a pearl farm. The context and timing made the nature lessons here especially touching and profound for me, as they pointed back to the very spiritual lessons I’d been learning and experiencing.
God’s love for us is so personal, and so rich and profound. It’s an infinite love. And through nature God gives object lessons that make that love clearer and just really inspire us, and cause our hearts to sing: “Oh how He loves you and me!” when we understand more about the nature of that love, and what it accomplishes in us, yes even through trials, to realize the profoundly wonderful end goal God has in mind.
Before visiting the farm, not knowing much about pearls and how they are sourced, I had thought all pearls were formed naturally, and didn’t know there are actual farms where farmers grow mussels, and place sand and other particles into the soft tissue of the mussel, and then harvest pearls from them.
Similarly, when we are hit with hardships and trials, if we don’t know the Bible’s doctrines on God’s discipline and the sanctification process, we often conclude we’re in the wild open sea, hurled against the rocks apathetically by the impersonal waves, undergoing a senseless struggle for survival. We don’t realize we’re actually in a contained pearl farm, watched over by a Farmer who gives us the utmost love and care, and provides the exact conditions needed to not only survive, but to be in the best health possible and to produce a valuable pearl and come through the experience with a gem of great price. (Also simultaneously we of course have an enemy in the world, the devil and unrepentant people who can do some very cruel things, and we sometimes create suffering to ourselves and others too.)
Depending on what kind of shape or type of pearl is wanted, the farmer puts a different shape or kind of organic material into the mussel, and this affects what kind of pearl is produced, the shape and color. The farmer could for instance, create a heart-shaped pearl this way, or a diamond-shaped pearl. Each clam or mussel has a different “calling”. The farmer has a different goal in the type of pearl he is aiming to create through each.
But imagine the sorrow, hurt, anger, and pain of the farmer if he creates the perfect environment for his clams or mussels, gives them everything they need, feeds them with the highest quality food, looks after them week-after-week, and when he goes to harvest the pearls, there are none, or there are only very few. Imagine if most of the clams died and were destroyed by the very sand particles He put inside them in order to produce the pearl.
Jesus is the pearl Farmer and far too often this is the sad experience so many of us give to Him.
In our lives we each individually decide whether the particles of sand (representing trials, hardship) destroy the clam (representing our heart and character), or whether we, the clam, turn them into pearls through God’s process at work in us.
The whole purpose of our life in this world is to produce the pearl. Thus living in this world, and not producing a pearl by the end of life, is choosing to make a complete failure of one’s life and purpose.
It takes sand causing great irritation, to the point where the sand would completely break apart and destroy the clam through a slow and painful process if the clam does not learn to produce a protective covering – it takes irritation of this severity – to produce the pearl.
The process is either one of life or one of death, and it all hinges on whether the clam makes the protective covering, or whether it fails to do so.
In our case we have a will – unlike the clam – and thus whether we produce the “covering” hinges not on chance but on our choice.
But many become bitter about their trials and hardships and lose their faith, and are destroyed in heart and character.
The very trials needed to produce the pearl are devalued as being senseless, unfair, tyrannical, and useless. Thus no pearl is produced. The sand wins the battle, breaking apart the delicate tissues of the clam, killing it.
Many are angry at the discipline of God (I’m not saying all hardship in this life is God’s discipline as that is not the case). Others are angry with God for the pain Adam’s sin brought into this world, something God did not do and had no part in. Others blame God for the abuse or mistreatment their parents did to them, or whom other close relatives gave to them.
In one way or another many say in their hearts “God is unjust for asking me to go through pain,” charging him with the pain that others brought into the world, refusing to take up their cross in this world and go through the many types of suffering in this world that He asks us to endure, refusing to give back faith and love to the One who gave all for them on Calvary, because it cost them something and takes their all.
They refuse to produce the pearl.
God never wanted sin and pain to be here (it wasn’t His will) but now that it’s here God must fully win the battle of good vs. evil against Satan in order to end sin and suffering for all time, and that takes time and it takes our participation as His church on earth, obeying His Word and carrying out His mandate to spread the gospel to the world, and to underdo a personal transformation through the sanctification process in order to part with the sin in our own hearts, in order to accomplish that.
He asks us to be involved in this war because there’s no other way. There’s no immediate way out of suffering for anyone.
Let’s make the right choices and have the right attitude of gratefulness, worship, and love towards God.
Let’s be active in our sanctification, and understand the importance and necessity of this process, not devaluing or taking the position that it’s not essential for the Christian. With joy and eagerness to please our Lord, let’s produce a pearl for Him, even though the process is very difficult, and will take all our energy, effort, commitment, and resolve.
It will be a difficult process, and it will require everything from us, but we owe back to the One who gave His all on Calvary a complete commitment to Him and His cause. A love that is more than words and is shown through our actions and cooperation and endurance.