Good, the Archenemy of Best

While shopping with her parents one day, a little girl came across a plastic pearl necklace. She fell in love with them the minute they went on her neck.  "Daddy, pleeease, pleeease, can I have this necklace," she begged. Her father, being the dad to a daughter, immediately bought them for her. 

Well, day after day, week after week, year after year, that little girl went everywhere in her pearl necklace. And every night, when her father came to tuck her in, she would say, "Daddy, aren't my pearls beautiful?" He would smile and say, "Yes, my darling, they are... and so are you."
 

Then one night, a few years later, his answer suddenly changed. When the little girl said, "Daddy, aren't my pearls beautiful?" He smiled and responded, "Do you love me?" The little girl was surprised, "Of course I love you, Daddy" Well then, he said, "Will you give me your pearls?" The little girl quickly brought her hands to her neck and clutched her pearls. With a confused and hurt look on her face, she said, "No, Daddy, not my pearls... you can have anything, but please not my pearls." Her father leaned forward, kissed her head and left for the night. 

This exchange; however, was repeated the next night and the night after that and the night after that. Her father would come into her room and smile and say, "Do you love me?" She would answer back, "You know I do" and then he would say, "Then may I have your pearls?" 

But night after night, the little girl would offer anything and everything - her baby dolls, her barbies, her sticker collection, her board games, her art supplies, her teddy bear, but never her pearls.  And so night after night, her father would kiss her and leave her clutching her pearls.
 

Until one night, he walked into the room and found the little girl crying. He said, "Honey, are you all right?" The little girl, nose red, eyes puffy, held up a clinched fist. Slowly, she unfolded her fingers and between sobs said, "Daddy, I love you. Here are my pearls." A huge smile immediately broke across the father's face as he knelt down beside her bed and reached his hand into his pocket. Slowly, he pulled out a real strand of pearls and placed them on his daughter's neck. He had had them all along. He just needed her to trust him enough to take the fake strand off before he put the real strand on her.

I woke up this morning with this story on my mind and one question in my head... What I am holding in a clinched fist today?

It's ok to hope and to dream, but we should always do our dreaming with open hands because, whether we are eight or eighty, when we come before the Father, we will always be a naïve little child, who could quite possibly be clutching a fake strand of pearls. 

So let us hope, dream and love, but let us do so never forgetting that He is the one who placed those longing in our hearts in the first place and that He loves us and that His plans for us are good. Let us never forget that He is a giver and not a taker because He takes counterfeit treasures for the sole purpose of replacing them with items of great value and eternal glory. 

Let us never again live our lives clutching plastic pearls.