What's in a name

My name is Marguerite which means pearl. Pretty nice thought and during my life I suppose I’ve been encouraged about being precious and unique. I like to think the parable by Jesus of the pearl of great price is talking about me and knowing that he paid the ultimate price for me. There’s also something encouraging on those days where I just feel irritated that I symbolically started off as a grain of sand placed inside an oyster and over a period of time, through some irritation, I will turn into a pearl. Remembering teaching about iron sharpening iron and quotes about what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…..we’re all a work in progress after all. We’re all on a journey of becoming more like Jesus, we start off as a total mess and after lots of hard and painful work by God via the Holy Spirit, with our submission and humility, we’ll be changed into something more acceptable to God. A work going on underneath the covering of the blood of Jesus, a sinner under a cloak of protection from the wrath of God. The final completion of the job at Judgement, after a shameful experience of my life being played on the big screen for everyone to see, being held to account for where I failed in the improvement plan, why had I given the Holy Spirit such a difficult job in turning me into Jesus????

I don’t think like that anymore, thank God!

I do believe I am unique, precious and of value. I don’t believe I started off a mess or am still a mess or that over time the Holy Spirit is working hard on turning me into Jesus under the covering of his blood.

As a starting point; if God wanted lots of mini Jesus’ he would have made me a boy….My creator wants me, the Marguerite he had in mind before I was even born. I don’t believe he wants to shape us all into identical models of the perfect Christian, I think he wants us to know our true identity as he created us, with our own personalities, our own unique selves made in His image.

When I used to think I was  ‘a mess’, I didn’t look far enough back. I only thought about my life before I was 17, thinking the improvement plan began once I believed God was interested in my life, from the time I heard God’s commitment to care for me. I became aware as the years went by that he was caring for me and providing for me long before I was 17 but I still did not really understand how God viewed me back then. I needed to grasp something of God’s original thought towards me and his eternal thoughts towards me, thoughts that didn’t change as my behaviour became more rebellious. He has always wanted the best for me and more importantly he has always, and will always, love me.

I am still a work in progress though. My starting point is not from mess to perfect, it is from perfect in his sight to knowing I’m perfect in his sight. The journey continues ….knowing the destination is not going to be a shameful experience as all my mess has already been taken away by Jesus 2,000 years ago. I just need to remember to push the reset button every so often and delete all the information that would tell me a different story. To continue to walk with the Spirit who reveals the truth that will renew my mind, removing the lies that tell me I’m ‘less than’. To go back to the beginning to see my story the way God sees my story, to believe what he believes about me. I am a pearl of great price.

A final thought, there is a daisy called Marguerite and people have been known to pull daisy’s apart to check who loves them….he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not. Today is a good day to know he loves me, he loves me and there is no petal in the universe with ‘he loves me not’ written on it.