Marbles

 

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a marble factory with his brother. They tended to the machines and watched marbles roll out batch after batch. Other workers were there tending to things like quality assurance and typical business matters. The brothers just lived there, tending to the machines.

Marble production was at an all time high. Colors of all sorts, cat eyes, big ones, little ones, shiny ones, dull ones, the list was endless. But one day one off the brothers found something marble like but… different. It wasn’t very shiny and didn’t have any color except when the light hit it at just the right angle. The factory had no record of it and couldn’t conceive of how to produce such a thing. It was an anomaly, a very strange marble indeed. 

So the man kept it in his pocket, for he saw the value of such a thing, even though he knew now what to make of it at first. As the weeks faded into the past he did some digging and some asking. 

What he eventually came to understand was astounding… the thing didn’t appear to be made with human hands because it wasn’t. It was slowly created over time in the belly of a little sea creature. This was a long forgotten thing in their world. The brother only found this out by talking with an old jeweler who had a book on the subject.

His brother thought him odd, obsessing over a little pebble thing. It wasn’t jealousy. He honestly had no interest in the object and was bewildered by his brother’s attention to it. Any value this thing had must be imagined. Why would you want a little white rock instead of hundreds of beautifully marbles made to your own satisfaction?

This was common in their world for this was the last pearl and the first one the town had seen in a generation. But the man with the pearl insisted its value was greater than that of a thousand of the best marbles the factory could produce. Most of the town mocked him, for this seemed like ridiculous delusion. Some saw what the lone man saw and he invited them to partake in the gains from the sale of the item, which could only be done in a distant land from which there was no return.

It would cost them everything but the reward would be a life of wealth and pleasure beyond anything they could imagine whilst ankle deep in the muddy streets of the little village.
A few went with. Most stayed behind making mud pies and marbles.

Maybe people would say Christ is a worthless icon. That is a common idea in our world. He is our pearl, not created by our hands or according to our will. To the contrary, we are created by His hands according to His will. Many will wonder why we hold fast to what seems like a dull little pebble when we could have all the shiny marbles we want, all the idols we want, made according to our desires. 

This is only because they don’t see the value. They just don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear and no amount of reasoning will fix that. That might sound like an odd thing coming from me because I do contend for truth a lot. So why do I? Because we don’t address lies in order to manipulate people into having affection for Christ. We address lies and misinformation or just general ignorance because the truth is important. People need the truth. They need it in love but they still need truth.

Maybe it doesn’t seem loving to tell someone the Christ they are imagining is a worthless icon or that they’re dealing in dangerous paganism like a kid playing with gas and matches but ya know what?

A loving disposition devoid of truth isn’t loving either. Oh its popular, but it’s not loving. Do not fool yourselves into thinking verity should be cut down by affection. 

No no... that simply won’t do.