Illustration

The pastor at my church gave a memorable illustration yesterday at church, and I will reproduce it here to the best of my abilities:

Imagine that your grandmother left you a piece of jewelry of questionable value. You see it and like it, but don't know how much it is worth. You set it on your dresser along with the other things that usually occupy the top of your dresser. As time goes on, if you're like me, you pile more and more things onto the dresser, and the piece of jewelry is stashed under all of those things. One day, you remember the jewelry, and you dig it out, wondering what its value is. So you take it to a jeweler to get it appraised. The jeweler takes out his loop (which is basically a magnifying glass) and takes a look. He seems interested, and gets out a bigger magnifying glass to inspect the jewelry. He seems somewhat excited and says, "Wait a moment, I need to take this to the back room to examine it further." So he takes the jewelry to the back room, and gets increasingly excited as he examines it. He starts to sweat, and is amazed and comes back to you saying, "This is an incredibly, incredibly rare piece of jewelry! It is priceless." The piece of jewelry is worth more than his entire establishment. Even though you may not have understood the value of it, he did. And—here's the memorable part—even though you may not have understood the value of the jewelry, and even though you may have left it under a pile of stuff on your dresser, the jewelry did not cease to be priceless. Nothing you did changed the value of that piece of jewelry, and the jeweler understood that you possess something that is of extreme value.

The analogy, of course, is to the pearl of great value, which is an analogy to the salvation Christ has given us, that we have and possess. Even if we let things like work and school pile on top of it, even if we neglect it for a while by not reading the Bible or praying, the salvation gift from Christ doesn't cease to be priceless. Nothing we do can change its extreme value, and for some reason that really struck me. I guess it's because I have often let things pile on top of it and have neglected it, but it doesn't change the fact that I possess something that is valuable beyond measure. That if only I would understand it, I would know, like the jeweler, how much more I would care for it and take care of it. It puts one in awe, to know you possess something so, so priceless.