The Pearl of Great Price
Have you ever really stopped to think about what a pearl actually is? We usually see a pearl after all the work is finished. It is sitting in a piece of jewelry, polished and shining, and we think, "Oh, that's pretty." We know pearls are valuable, but most of us probably don't stop to think about how that little round object got there in the first place. A natural pearl has a remarkable story behind it. It is formed inside a living mollusk through a biological process that takes place mostly out of sight. When you understand what is actually happening, that little pearl becomes a whole lot more interesting. A natural pearl begins when something becomes enclosed within the tissues of a mollusk. It might be a grain of sand, a parasite, some organic material, a piece of tissue, or some other foreign material. We have all heard the story that a pearl begins with a grain of sand getting into an oyster, but that is not really how every natur...