The Daily Pearl
On Worth
A pearl kept from the brand’s mornings: a verse to hold, a prayer to say and a word to carry.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”
Matthew 13 : 45-46
A Prayer for This Morning
Father, quiet the voices that price me by my usefulness. Teach me to carry my worth as the merchant carried his pearl, certainly and without display. Remind me, whenever the day tries to bargain, that the price was settled long ago and paid in full.
Affirmation
My worth was decided before I had done anything to earn it, and nothing today can bargain it down.
The Reflection
The parable is short enough to miss. A merchant, a lifetime of searching, one pearl; then the swift, unhesitating sale of everything else. We are used to reading ourselves as the seeker and heaven as the find, and that reading holds. But the older teachers turned it round: the merchant is God, and the pearl of great price is you.
A pearl cannot raise its own value. It does not perform, persuade, or improve its lustre by effort; it is simply worth what the buyer will give for it. That is either terrifying or the deepest possible rest, depending on the buyer. Yours gave everything he had, and called the bargain good.
So the question the day will ask, and it will ask it in a hundred small ways, is not what are you worth but who set the price. Answer it once, early, and the rest of the day loses its power to negotiate.
In Her Company
St Josephine Bakhita
Sold into slavery as a child in Sudan, she discovered in Christ a worth no market could ever set, and spent her free years as a sister whose gentleness disarmed everyone she met.
Josephine Bakhita was born in Darfur, Sudan, around 1869 and was kidnapped into slavery as a young girl. Brought to Italy, she came to know Christ, gained her freedom, and in 1896 entered the Canossian Sisters at Schio, where she served with legendary gentleness for fifty years. She was canonised in 2000 and is the patron saint of Sudan and of survivors of trafficking.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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