Pearl

Pearls are mentioned nine times in the Bible and are symbolic of something precious and valuable. The most famous example of this, and which remains in common parlance, is heaven’s ‘pearly gates’:

Revelation 21:21: And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

I suspect that these are not twelve excretions from giant molluscs like the little, imperfect examples in my collection, but large, beautiful pearl-like objects demarking the boundaries of New Jerusalem. Natural pearls are famously made by the fish’s measures to smother an intruding parasite with calcium carbonate and conchiolin, before safely excreting it away. So a pearl is a beautiful safety mechanism, by which something dangerous and harmful is kept away so it cannot wreak harm. And so with heaven’s gates, symbolic or otherwise. Essentially keeping evil out and the Lord’s folk in, their security does not consist of barbed wire and concrete towers, but stunning, shimmering beauty. Heaven shall be truly beautiful and perfectly safe. 

  A   D