Today’s post, “Carol’s Gems: Garnets For Jesus,â€Â is a monthly series on birthstones from one of my favorite blogger friends, Carol Peterson. Carol is a writer with a heart for encouragement, sharing parables of faith on her blog From Carol’s Quill and making learning exciting in Fun with Finance and other teacher resource books.
Every month has a birthstone. The birthstone for the month of January
is the garnet. And it reminds me of Jesus.
The term “garnet†refers to a family of minerals. The garnet family
contains gemstones that appear in every color except blue. The
difference is what they are called and what extra minerals they
contain. For example, within the mineral family of “garnet†are
tsavorites (green), hessonite (orange, brown and pink), and rhodolite
(purplish red). When we picture a garnet, however, most of us think of
the deep blood red stone.
Red Garnet
Blood red. The color of Jesus’ blood shed for us. A forever reminder
of His sacrifice for us.
In gemstone symbolism, the garnet signifies eternal friendship and
trust. Such as is found in Jesus, our eternal friend in whom we can
place our trust.
Just like there are star sapphires, there are also star garnets. The
“stars†are produced by a sphere of tiny rods composed of titanium
dioxide. These rods reflect light back out of the garnet and appear to
our eye as a 4 or 6-rayed star that moves across the face of the
gemstone. Star garnets are only found in India and Idaho.
Star? With our celebration of Christmas still fresh in our hearts, it
would be nice to have a star garnet to always light the way to Jesus.
Star Garnet from Americanlisted.com
The garnet is known for its luminosity and high refractive quality.
Because of those qualities, early travelers carried garnets, which
they believed lit up the night and protected a person from evil. Many
extra biblical sources suggest that Noah used a lantern made from
garnet to help him see through the storms while on the ark.
Evidently, the garnet reminded Noah of Jesus, too.
Happy birthday to everyone born in January—especially my super husband
Jim, whose birthday is TODAY!
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for placing reminders in this world
of who you are. Please open our eyes to see you in everything today.
Amen.
WHAT ABOUT YOU? Do you own a garnet?
I always think of the garnet as being red, that’s cool they can be found in different colors. Star garnets make some of the most beautiful rings!
Happy Birthday to Jim, hope you 2 are enjoying the day!!
@ Chris – thanks for the birthday wishes for Jim. And thanks for letting me play at geology each month!
Thanks for the post, Carol. I don’t own a garnet, but it’s interesting to learn more about this stone.