Precious Gems,
Many years ago a college chum studying gemology handed me a loupe. Under magnification the stone held a small interior cloud – a faint fingerprint of where it came from. He called it an inclusion: a flaw. Nature’s birthmark – the tiny time capsules that make every single natural diamond completely unique) – devalued it. Which tells you something about how the world prices honesty.
Interesting.
Diamonds are carbon – the same element in your pencil, your compost pile, your own body. What makes a diamond is what carbon endures: heat and pressure, deep and long past counting. Then a volcano has to lose its temper and throw them toward the light. Beauty arrives by way of upheaval.
The trade grades them: cut, color, clarity, carat – so everyone knows what a thing is worth before anyone really looks at it.
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 comes to a people home from exile and already arguing about who counts. Isaiah names the ones the old rules graded out – foreigners, eunuchs, the ones with an inclusion on the certificate – and God gathers them in. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
And still others besides.
This weekend we will celebrate sixty years of ministry in Foster City. Not because we have been flawless, but because we are still here, still catching light and sending it outward.
You are worth more than diamonds – a brilliant refraction of God’s love light, inclusions and all.
I look forward to seeing you at 10 am Sunday on 1130 Balclutha, Zoom, or Livestream. Bring a friend; there’s room in the setting for another precious gem.
Yours in the rough,
Rev. Michael