[New Year to 2026]

It’s a time of feasting!  We are still among the trees, balls and all things bright and beautiful for Christmas.  Now, the world is gearing up for a noisy spectacle with fireworks and crowds around New Year’s.  While part of the globe is still asleep heading into the last day of the year, the farthest islands in the Pacific, on the lines of time, marked on calendars and clocks, are beginning to celebrate and announcing a day that breaks like all the other new days, with a special name of “new”.

Is this really a reason for a feast?  I have met several people from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, throughout my life and am always amazed at the differences in approaches over the festive season.  New Year is celebrated with great fanfare, because it was allowed, In a totally authoritarian secular society, Christmas was forbidden to the younger people.  That’s how it was explained to me.  The older people, who go to church on Christmas and were used to it, were allowed to continue with it, but it was mostly a subdued, oppressive atmosphere – nothing festive around a meal, with Christmas crackers and paper-crown hats.

The festive season made me grateful again that I live in a Western society, where the principles of the community are based on Christian values, whether they are recognized or not.  We are free to celebrate our festivals around the true content of the Feast.  We do this with lots of music, homemade and professional, homemade Christmas crackers with Scripture, which everyone around the table reads out, so that the Word of God takes its place of honour.

We’ve written a lot about festivals and crowns in other pieces of Pebbles.  Israel’s worship calendar was (and still is) expressed in seven annual festivals.  The crowns of reward for the believer are for now in our lifetime, celebrating the miracle of a Christian life — the crown of Life, the incorruptible crown and the crowns of Glory, Righteousness and Joy.

Similarly, from the recent study of Revelation, we have understood more deeply the immediate application of the symbolism described there, to explain the invisible realm in comprehensible words and images.  The New Jerusalem is the true and invisible Church of Jesus, the Body, with streets of gold that we now walk on.  Gold refined by fire is our testimony of miracles, God’s interventions in our lives, and answers to prayer.  It is the golden streets on which we walk the path of life; translucent-gold because they are a reflection of the glory of God from our walk with Him.

In the final chapter of Revelation, the Gates of the Holy City—gigantic pearls, twelve of them, three in every wind direction—are described as the entrance to the city.

It’s mind-boggling to think that each gate is one big pearl. Pearls were especially valuable in ancient times. They were taken out of the sea at great risk. 

Besides unimaginable and unearthly riches that such pearls would reflect, there is so much more to the symbolism of a pearly gateway.

Of all gemstones, the Romans preferred pearls more than anything else.

Drinking pearls dissolved in vinegar was common.  Cleopatra is said to have dissolved and drunk a pearl worth $100,000. Valerius Maximus, at a feast, put a pearl before each guest to drink, and he himself, Horace relates, swallowed a very special pearl of an earring, dissolved in wine, so that he could say that he had squandered a million sestertii in one gulp.

The parable confirmed this when Jesus spoke in Matthew 13:46 of the pearl of great value, which was worth all that you possessed. Gates of pearl depict inaccessible wealth.

Pearls are made when a mollusk, such as an oyster, coats an irritant with layers of a “substance” called nacre to protect itself. In natural pearls, this irritation is often a parasite or a piece of sand that gets trapped and penetrates deep into the “heart” of the shell.  The build-up of the layers of shiny nacre is the mollusk’s defence mechanism, to create a smooth, iridescent pearl, kaleidoscopic and lustrous over time as layers build up for protection and comfort, a mysterious and “hidden” process. 

The “gateway” to the true Church, the New Jerusalem, which is the presence of God, is the “irritants” of our lives that shape our testimony. God moulds our most precious jewel deep in our hearts, shaped and styled in the beauty of the miracle of salvation, redemption and restoration in our inner being, as we enter and dwell in the holy City.

Long ago, Isaiah wrote about the holy City of God, the precious presence of the true God where we, the citizens of the Kingdom, dwell.

There will no longer be anything heard about violence in your country, or about devastation and destruction within your borders.

You will call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. (Isaiah 60:18)

Is there in the song of the ancient prophet the key to the gate of the holy City, our refuge and protection in all circumstances?

Worship is not something God “needs.”  We don’t tell about His greatness and miracles so that He feels good or thinks better of us.  We worship as a proclamation of our priorities.  True worship is a life of obedience, a serious and constant association with the Word of God, and the declaration of God’s place of honor as first and foremost in our lives.

That is precisely why praise and worship have such an important place in difficult times.  When the darkness around us thickens, confusion and deception surround us, then we call upon God and His name, which is an expression of His character.  When we invoke the full impact of the Name of our Lord and lament about everything around us, our song or prayer of praise and worship is our covering, our defence mechanism, the layers of nacre of glorious answer to prayer that brings salvation in all that happens to us.  

With a cry of worship, we activate God’s promises of salvation. As the “irritants” of brokenness and imperfection, violence and lies, dominate our world and invade our souls, we call God’s “pearl nacre” to turn the curse into a blessing (Nehemiah 13:2) and make everything work together for good. (Romans 8:28)

It is a hallmark of “our” worldview that salvation and restoration are possible.  No mess is too big for our God to turn around and change for our benefit.  Several ancient philosophers insisted that the world was so evil that only total destruction and then replacement with everything new could be the solution.  

The Gospel has good news. No sin (the consequences of wrong choices that lead to destruction and cause you to miss “the mark” – your life potential) is too great for the saving hand of Jesus.

“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

As we learned, scarlet was the deep and powerful dye that did not wash out easily.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. (Psalm 100:4)