I have thought about the parables for many years.
With the three to six year old child I see that the kingdom grows like a mustard seed or flour leavened with yeast. It is precious like a pearl, valuable like a treasure.
With the six to twelve year old child I see it requires we work, like the man who planted and the woman who mixes and kneads. It requires we rest, like the man who sleeps as the seed grows. Sometimes we must search for it, like a Pearl, others come across it by chance like a hidden treasure.
Sometimes the “child” helps me to see new things. I asked my own college age atria bambini: but the language is not the kingdom is like a Pearl, it says the kingdom is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. To which one responded: oh, then we are the Pearl and Jesus is the merchant, he gives up everything. The other: it is the found sheep in a new way.
Last week in a review with the older children, a new child to the atrium when asked what Jesus might have meant by comparing the kingdom to a Pearl said thoughtfully: well pearls are very precious jewelry. And…They take a long time to form. This prompted a discussion on how pearls are formed over time. And in my later reflection I saw something I’d never seen before.
In the parable of the Precious Pearl, is the mystery of suffering in the kingdom. The value of the Pearl comes from an irritant. It is through a painful grain of sand that the Pearl is formed over time.
Which makes me think again of how the children for years have been trying to teach me.
The youngest child was drawn to the idea that a bigger Pearl must be more valuable. I tried to steer them away from this worldly association by using a smaller but real Pearl. They liked that.
But perhaps, no not perhaps, they intuitively knew that bigger is better here, for it is how they love: big or not at all.
And it is how Christ loves, and how he lived, and how he died, and how he Rose to life again.
The mystery of suffering is not easy to grasp. It is not easy to be grateful for. But from the children, I have learned to hear his call in a new way:
Pick up your Pearl and follow me.
