Parable of the Pearl: The Delight of Being Sought

Hidden away? Longing to be sought after? In the parable of the pearl merchant, we find a lover with a quest.

Imagine yourself as a child and you’re at a friend’s birthday party.

A game is played. Hide and seek.

Your friend, the one who is celebrating the birthday, is chosen to be the one who seeks out the hidden.

You and the others run off to find hiding places.

You sneak into a wardrobe and wait.

Squeals of discovery burst out from places around the house as your friends are being sought, discovered, and enjoyed.

You wait and wait.

Then you hear ‘Come on kids, let’s have the party food’

You wonder if someone is going to come and find you.

No one comes.

After five minutes, which seems like an hour, you come out from the hiding place and merge as discreetly as possible into the party celebrations.

No one sought you out. Not even the parent, the host, noticed you weren’t there.

A little parasite enters your soul. The parasite whispers evil lies.

You are of no worth
No one cares about you
Everyone will overlook you
Stay hidden, stay safe
No one cares

What’s it like to be ‘sought out’?

Not just in a child’s game of hide and seek, but in general?

Are you scared of being found?

Perhaps you will be rejected because of what others might find?

But then again, perhaps others may find something of beauty and strength and want to see it come to full life.

The way God works is like a merchant who has a compelling vision to find fine pearls.

What’s a compelling vision?

I have a vision of writing this post. I can see it up online.

People reading it and finding some help.

I have a vision of some of the people I share stories with and how this writing might connect with them.

I have a vision, and it compels me to write in such a way that it speaks to the deep places of the soul.

This vision pulls me, allures me, woo’s me as much as a blank canvas has a magnetic pull to an artist holding a brush.

There’s a vision, and it’s compelling.

We must do it.

Others may consider this compelling vision ridiculous, but it’s how God’s kingdom works. It’s how great art comes about.

God’s depth of interest in us is not superficial or glib. God is the one that seeks us out. Like a merchant searching for a fine pearl.

Have you ever been sought out like that?

Parable of the pearl

Jesus tells a little story called the parable of the pearl.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;
on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Matthew 13:45-46

Here is a merchant with a compelling vision of finding beautiful pearls. That is their passion and call.

In Jesus’ days pearls were rare, and so to be searching for one would seem quite absurd to those listening. Why would you be doing that?

Even more absurd would be to sell everything one has to purchase that pearl.

To throw logic aside for the sake of a ball of Calcium Carbonate.

But the Kingdom of Heaven is right side up to our upside down way of looking at things.

One of the greatest gifts you can give someone else is the gift of searching them out.

Not in an intrusive way, but more with a gentle curiosity about who they are and what’s underneath.

I believe all of us have pearls within us.

Pearls of wisdom grown from layers and layers of truth laid down over a parasite that has entered us.

Perhaps the parasite is still alive and well and needs truth layers to smother its existence.

I truly love it when the oyster shell of someone’s life opens enough for a deep examination, and the pearls can be seen.

It takes a commitment to search and find.

It takes a sacrificial generosity to validate its worth.

The pearl is but a ball of calcium carbonate until someone wants to know its beauty and bring that beauty to full shine.

The parable of the pearl calls us to seek out hiddenness of others.

Mental Health and being ‘sought out’

What’s it like to be ‘sought out’?

For someone to deeply know you. To have your best interests at heart with no strings attached.

There is nothing for them in this desire to go deep. It is a pure, gentle curiosity. Self-less and sacrificial.

Sacrificial to the point of crucifixion, but that’s how love works.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13

To be sought

Into the marketplace
He slipped unseen
Rummaging through fake beads
Until he saw me

I don’t know why
I caught his attention
I’m simply some calcium carbonate
Layered into a ball

He examined me closely
I don’t know what for
His gaze never left my surface
I could see he wanted more

I was a little bit scared
By his relentless steer
But it was his compassionate love
That calmed my fear

He was searching
I longed to be found
My purpose to be empowered
God’s beauty unbound

I was never meant to hide
Amongst plastic baubles
Fake jewelry
Fig leaf garden lies

He sold his everything
To bring me to display
That’s what happens
When agape comes to play

Both he and I now seek
Other pearls hidden away
Hidden under marketplace muck
Quietly longing someone to pay

Please pay quiet attention
Give ‘no strings attached’ love
I want to be owned
I want to be sought

I didn’t think I had beauty
I didn’t think I had worth
Until someone like you
Gave me new birth

Barry Pearman

Quotes to consider

Where there is great love, there is always miracles. Willa Cather
The compelling vision is . . . maybe, because of our conversations, we can want God more than we want any lesser blessing. Larry Crabb
Imagine conversations where we’re known, explored, discovered, and then touched. Where another person moves into our lives with the power of the Spirit. Larry Crabb
The compelling vision really can be reduced to this: not that your problems are going to go away, not that your wife who’s having an affair is going to repent and come back and you have a wonderful marriage (if that takes place, praise God in joy); not that your kids are going to be all that you want them to be (if they’re walking with the Lord, celebrate God’s grace in your life); not that health is going to be returned (if it is, again, praise God), but the compelling vision is not that you’ll have a better life, the compelling vision is that there’s a better hope.
Francis Xavier was the Jesuit director of missions in India, China and Japan in the sixteenth century. He once said that he longed to be back in Paris ‘to go shouting up and down the streets to tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ’. Michael Griffiths. Give up your small ambitions
One of the deepest sources of my own loneliness is that so few people seem to have much of an interest in exploring my interior world. Larry Crabb
We think — wrongly — that God can only love perfect things. What a tiny and weak God that would be. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering
True conversation always puts the conversant’s at risk, because you cannot truly converse without the risk of conversion. Lee Bernard J., Cowan Michael A. Gathered and sent: the mission of small church communities today.
It is the unrivaled wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ that no other God has wounds. Os Guinness
It is only when we are known that we are positioned to become conduits of love. And it is love that transforms our minds, makes forgiveness possible, and weaves a community of disparate people into the tapestry of God’s family. To be known is to be pursued, examined, and shaken. Curt Thompson M.D

Questions to answer

What is your initial reaction to be the thought of being sought out and fully known as in the parable of the pearl?
Imagine yourself as that child hiding away. What do you most desire?
The parable of the pearl speaks about the cost of going deep with someone? What could be the potential reward?

Formation exercise

Write out some of the parasites that might enter a child’s life when they go through an experience such as I wrote about above. What layers of love and truth need to be layered repeatedly over the parasite to kill it and form a pearl?