3. Wednesday (Dive A)

Hello! How are you all? Having a good time at Deep Sea Divers? It’s great here, isn’t it? I haven’t had this much fun since Jesus’ marathon storytelling

session. Oh! Let me introduce myself.

I’m Thaddeus. Yes, a bit of weird name, but not the strangest I’ve ever heard. I was one of Jesus’ team. Jesus picked a group of 12 of us to follow him and

be taught by him. We were called the disciples.

We went everywhere with him. We travelled all the way down to Jerusalem, the capital city. We walked along the banks of the great river Jordan. We sailed across the giant lake called Galilee. One day, Jesus walked out to the beach next to Lake Galilee and he sat down to teach. A huge crowd gathered around him to listen.

Jesus started telling stories. Sometimes we called these stories parables. They could be stories about fish, seeds, coins or sheep. But they weren’t actually stories about fish, seeds, coins or sheep. There were other meanings to the story.

The longer you thought about Jesus’ stories, the more hidden meanings you could discover.

As he sat on the beach, he told the people stories about wheat and weeds. Then he went back to his house and all of us – Jesus’ disciples – followed. We

asked him to explain what the stories meant. So he did, and then he told us more stories, about fishing nets and

treasure. (He finds the treasure box left by Flotsam and Jetsam.) Oh! Look at this! This is just like the treasure Jesus was talking about! And he told us one

about pearls.

Do you know what pearls are? They are small and round and shiny and white. (He finds the pearl left by Flotsam and Jetsam.) Oh, a bit like this one!

(He shows it to the Divers.) They are very precious – people wear them as jewellery. They grow inside the shells of creatures that live in the sea, creatures

like oysters.

The story about pearls is my favourite, let me tell it to you now:

‘The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a buyer and seller of pearls – a merchant – goes looking

for special pearls. When he finds a very valuable one, he goes and sells everything he owns so that he can buy the pearl.’

And that’s it. It’s only short, but it’s a great story and it made me think so much about what Jesus meant. What

made that pearl so special? Does this merchant have nothing except this pearl? Where’s he going to sleep? What is he going to wear? And what is the

hidden meaning? What does the pearl represent? Am I in this story?

I wonder what you think. Maybe you have some ideas about what Jesus was teaching us through this story…