Pearls
Dudley Tye
August 4, 2017

Revelation 21:21 – The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl.

When we read about heaven, we find that its gates are made with giant pearls. Imagine that! God could have made gates from anything, and yet he chose to make heaven’s gates with pearls. These are not your normal gates. I imagine them as massive pearls that tower over us.

God knew that through science we would realize just how an oyster was made. I believe that our great God is saying something in this situation. Think for a minute about how pearls are made. The shell of an oyster provides him with protection. When oysters eat, they open their hinged shells to take their food. Sometimes a grain of sand or some other object will get into the oyster’s mouth. This becomes a great irritation, a source of pain, to the oyster. Just think how painful it is when you get a piece of sand in your eye! To protect the oyster’s delicate body from the foreign object, the oyster releases a chemical inside to cushion itself from the pain. Over time, this chemical builds up, covers over the painful situation and makes something valuable and beautiful. It can take three years for a pearl to reach its maximum size.

This beautiful, valuable pearl originates from a painful situation. It’s made from something that should never have happened. But isn’t it like our God, who takes sin and turns it into grace; who takes hardship and turns it into strength; who takes trials and tests and turns them into testimonies that strengthen others?

Look to Jesus, who took painful sin and, through the power of the cross, turned in into beautiful, giant pearly gates through which we will enter into heaven!

Let me encourage you to take any pain that has happened in your life and turn it into a door for someone to walk through on their way to God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 – Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Dudley Tye