What Kind of Pearls Do You Search For?

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As a child, I wore necklaces made of pop beads, which resembled pearls but were plastic.  Jesus compared the kingdom of God to a real pearl—so valuable that a man trades everything he owns to possess it. This is an apt comparison. Pearls were expensive. Most of them came from the Persian Gulf, where men risked their lives to collect them from oyster beds. A diver, nose clipped closed with turtle shell and ears plugged with wax, sank to the bottom, weighted with a stone. Using fingers protected by leather caps, he filled a basket and then tugged on a rope to signal he was ready to be pulled up. Pearling was the chief industry of the United Arab Emirates until the Japanese invented cultured pearls.  Click to continue

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