Job 41:25

Do you know the lovely fact about the opal: that, in the first place, it is made of desert dust, sand and silica, and owes its beauty and preciousness to a defect? It is a stone with a broken heart. It is full of minute fissures, which admit air, and the air refracts the light. Hence, its lovely hues and that sweet “lamp of fire” that ever burns at its heart, for the breath of the Lord is in it. You are only conscious of the cracks and desert sand, but so He makes His precious opals.

We must be broken in ourselves before we can give back the lovely hues of His light, and the lamp of the Temple can burn in us and never go out. E LLICE HOPKINS