The white marble
At a young age, the boy’s parents gave him a large white marble as a present. Looking back, the boy could not remember whether they gave him an explanation of the gift. He was never sure of the context of the original gift. He just grew up knowing that his parents thought it was valuable.
As the years went by, the boy did not see much of a use for a marble. He did not collect rocks or actually play any games where the marble might be useful. A marble seemed boring. He thought instead that it would be a good starter for a rubber band ball. That would be something he could play with!
When new rubber bands found their way into the house, whether from the broccoli from the grocery store or from a package in the mail, he would wind the rubber band around the marble. Over time, the rubber band ball grew larger. Rather quickly, the large white marble disappeared from sight. He still remembered that it was there, but grew to love his rubber band ball.
At some point, the ball was too big for rubber bands. If he tried to stretch a rubber band around the ball it would break. But the boy liked the ball and wanted to keep adding to it. So he decided to add string to the ball. When a new piece of string, or yarn, or twine came into the house, he quickly appropriated it and wrapped it around the ball. Over the years, the ball became quite large. It had also become quite a tangle of string, yarn and twine. It assumed a prominent place in his room. He no longer thought about the white marble at the center of the ball.
The boy eventually became a man and left his parents’ home. The ball came with him. It was part of who he had become. He had worked over the years to create this ball. It was almost a memorial to the years he had spent adding layers to the ball. There was a certain pride in carrying it around.
One day, the man was thinking about his parents and remembered the original gift they had given him of the large white marble. He vaguely recalled that they considered it valuable. He was curious about it and whether it might actually be valuable. It was probably more valuable than a ball of string he thought. Perhaps the time has come in my life to take apart the ball of string and rubber bands and find the marble. As he looked at the ball of string, however, his initial thought was despair—how will I ever be able to unwind and remove all of this string? He decided the only way was to start by removing one layer at a time.
As he began the project, the outside layers came off quickly. The ends were easy to find. The strings had recently been added and pulled right off the ball. As he started to get past the surface layers, he began to encounter resistance. Sometimes it was hard to tell where the end of a string was. Some strings had tangled with others. Some string had been dirty or sticky when added, and clung to other strings quite vigorously. The thought of the valuable marble at the center motivated the man to continue working on removing layer after layer from the ball despite the amount of time it was taking him to make progress.
After what seemed like years of effort to remove the strings, the man reached the rubber bands. Surely this would be easier, he thought. He quickly discovered that the same issues plagued the rubber bands—and worse. Being stuck together for years in hot and cold seasons, the rubber bands had bonded together in places. Pulling on them just resulted in clumps coming off. The rubber bands were also brittle and broke easily. It seemed almost like a solid rubber ball at times. Removing layers was a slow process and required patience. It was so different trying to take off the layers than it had been to put them on!
Eventually, the man reached the end. There it was, the large white marble. He cleaned it and put it under the light. As he examined it closely for the first time since his childhood, he realized that it was not a white marble. It was a perfectly round white pearl, the most valuable of all natural pearls. A treasure given to him by his parents as a small child, found again. Surely he would now protect the pearl of great price as a treasure, in a place of prominence in his life, never to again be forgotten or neglected!
I was baptized as an infant and raised Catholic. Our faith was part of our life, but it was basically “cultural Catholicism” — we went to church on Sunday; when I got a little older, I went once a week for catechism class; we celebrated Christian holidays. No one really taught me to pray. I did not have a personal relationship with Jesus. Not surprisingly then, my superficial faith life as a young person did not keep me away from serious sin. I was an easy mark for temptation. Despite having been given the pearl of great price as a child, I was busy wrapping myself in rubber bands of sin before I was done with high school.
When I left for college, I completely abandoned the faith. I had one professor who was a Catholic priest. In our class, we had to write a paper on a Biblical topic. He commented in red pen in a margin on my paper—"it seems you have no faith." The comment annoyed me, but it was true. By now, I was busy wrapping myself in many different kinds of sins. Each year I was adding layer after layer.
The process continued in law school. Bad habits. A life of sin. My heart was getting much harder and I was taking positions on issues that now, thirty years later, I have a hard time believing I could take. I still thought I was a “good person,” but on the inside I was completely entangled in darkness.
When I got married, my only condition was that we get married in the Catholic Church. I candidly admitted I had no idea why this was important to me—I never went to church. Yet somehow it was critically important to me and we were married in the Church.
As I have written elsewhere, several years later I had a moment of clarity and realized I was on the path to hell. I returned to the Faith. The early years were a battle to conquer habitual mortal sin and addiction. With God’s grace, I was delivered from them. I devoted myself to prayer and learning about the Faith and started participating in prayer ministry. I worked through disordered attachments. As time progressed, I went through a deeper phase of deliverance and spiritual healing. That process took place over years. Other healing and deliverance has continued to take place over the years, including healing of ancestry. There have been times of dryness, dark nights of the soul, and moments of grace. In other words, I have been trying to live a Christian spiritual life and cooperate with God’s grace.
The story of the boy and the white marble is my attempt to convey some spiritual principles by using an allegory. There may be several levels to the allegory in my story, but the primary point is that when we persist in bad habits and sins over a period of time it tends to take a corresponding period of time to correct them, remove them and be healed from their effects. There is no “quick fix” to most spiritual problems.1 I say this not to cause discouragement or despair in you—on the contrary, it is to give you understanding and a cause for hope!
Understanding that the process will not be a “quick fix” so that you do not give up or become discouraged.
Understanding that some of the process will seem easy and some will seem hard.
Understanding that you are not the only person that has to deal with untangling the cords of sin and woundedness in your life.
Hope that God desires to help you repent and convert.
Hope that God desires you to remove the bondage of sin.
Hope that God wants you to be healed and delivered.
Hope that God loves you and wants you to spend eternity with Him in heaven.
Jesus said, “the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”2 If you are baptized and have been given the pearl of great price (salvation through Jesus Christ), but you have set it aside chasing sin and worldly pleasures, may you work and pray to recover that pearl; may you persevere in untangling yourself from sin and woundedness with the help of God’s grace; may you grab hold of Jesus in prayer and never let go!
Why did God make you?
God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.3
Eric A. Welter is an employment lawyer and trial attorney with a long-time devotion to intercessory prayer. He is a Catholic Christian who has been involved with intercessory and healing prayer ministry for over twenty years. The Abound in Hope Ministry website is https://www.aboundinhope.org/ministry.
This is the topic of an entire chapter in my next book.
Baltimore Catechism, Q.150 (1891 version).
Love this example of the pearl! Merry Christmas to the Welters!