Every girl loves pearls!

 

The following is an email forward my mother-in-law sent me one day.  As I read it, I stopped to have some self-examination on what things I clutch to. 

A little girl about the age of four was with her mother at a Five and Dime store when she spotted a pink foil box with a glistening pair of white pearls in them.  She wanted them badly.  Her mother looked at the price and saw they were $5.00.  She told her daughter, if she really wanted them, she could do some extra chores to earn the money and buy them for herself.  The little girl did more than her share of chores and her grandmother even gave her a dollar early for her birthday.  Before she knew it, she had the $5.00 saved up to buy the necklace.

She loved the necklace and wore it every day.  One night, the little girl’s father came to read her a bedtime story and asked her, “Do you love me?”  The little girl responded, “Yes Daddy, you know I love you.” To which her father responded, “Then can I have your pearls.”  The little girl was devastated and offered her father any other toy or jewelry she had besides the pearls.  Her father said, “That’s okay,” and went on to read her the story. 

The same scenario was repeated night after night until one night, the little girl with a trembling lip, handed the pearls to her father.  Her father reached out with one hand to receive the pearls, and in his other hand offered her a blue velvet box with a real set of genuine pearls.  He had had them the whole time.  He was waiting for her to give up her Dime Store pearls so he could give her a genuine treasure.

Isn’t it the same with our Heavenly Father?  As Brennan Manning says in The Ragamuffin Gospel, He is waiting for us to quit clinging to chards of brightly colored glass in order to offer us glorious riches of true value.  What are you clinging to that God could replace with something beautiful?

Blessings,

Candice