Bible Study for Christian Women and Pastors Wives ~ I Am A Pearl of Great Price, Part 4

Bible Study for Christian Women and Pastors Wives ~ I Am A Pearl of Great Price, Part 4
      Does Matthew 7:6 every give you a picture in your mind? I see a beautiful strand of valuable pearls thrown out into the hog pen in the mud and then see a really large hog just wallowing around, ripping the strand of pearls to shreds.
     I remember hearing a teenager who had been abused by her "boyfriend," make the comment: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."
      The only stand of pearls I have ever had were bought for less than a dollar. Needless to say, they were fake. Mama had a strand of "expensive-to-her" but truly inexpensive, cultured pearls. I certainly would not take my strand and toss it out in the barnyard, especially where the hog that climbed fences stayed when we could keep him in the fence. (I thought it was a good day when he was slaughtered...I was so tired of chasing him through the pasture and down the shell road in front of our house. That hog never, ever got out when daddy was home - he waited until daddy went to work and yellow school bus number two let me off a block and a half from the house. I wonder now if that hog was just trying to meet me at the bus stop? He liked me way more than I liked him.)
       Back to Matthew 7:6. (That was not a rabbit trail, but a hog trail.) "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
      This calls for another rabbit, uh, hog trail. As a small child, my family had gone the 185 or so miles from Houston, Texas, to Joaquin, Texas, to visit my grandmother. At the time, she lived in the same shotgun house my daddy had been born in. Her driveway was long, very long. There was a big shade tree at the end of the driveway. We three kids were playing in the red dirt and clay under that shade tree. Daddy, who was on the porch, jumped off the porch and raced toward us. He hollered for my big brother to "run as fast you can to the porch," and at the same time, grabbed my sister under one arm and me under the other and raced right behind my brother back to the porch.
       When we were safely on the porch, we questioned him about what had just taken place. He pointed to a sounder of very dangerous wild hogs and boars, all with long tusks racing to the exact area where we were playing.
       What about Matthew 7:6? What are the pearls and who are the swine and who is in danger of torn asunder by them? We will look at those questions tomorrow.

Be blessed in The Name above every name, Jesus! I know I am!
Linda L Culbreth