The Purple Balm

Cruising up and down the isles at the International Christian Retail Show, ICRS, I noticed a booth where a lady, all dressed in a lovely purple dress, was displaying her product called Heaven’s Healing Balm. “It’s Divine!” the pamphlet announced! Interested in understanding the divinity of her product and her attractive booth, I sidled over to get a better look. The little tins filled with the honey-colored stuff did look vaguely divine, but our conversation quickly veered off into the divinity of the purple color that graced her and the booth. I asked her if she knew that color had led to the discovery of America…rather indirectly to be sure. 

Indeed, purple was a very rare color back in the days of the Bible. It was the color of royalty. We see Lydia in the Bible being a “seller of purple.” It was a rare and expensive dye derived from a particular kind of seashell that was found in the Mediterranean Sea. All available shells had been hunted down and processed into this dye. With the shells becoming harder to find, the push was on to find new sources for them. The likely spot appeared to be in the huge body of water beyond the forbidding Straits of Gibraltar. But to go through them was to encounter the ravages of an endless ocean. Bigger ships and braver people were required to wander beyond the relative safety of the Mediterranean. So it was that the push to find more purple seashells drove the push for greater seafaring prowess. And these bigger, better boats, initially starting with the goal of finding shells, found much, much more! And one of those finds was the New World itself! So, indirectly, the color of her dress paved the way for her being there in the first place. Hmm!


Anyway, when we again turned attention to the product at hand, this lady said that she uses this stuff for headaches and migraines. So, I successfully made a deal that in exchange for all the information that I had been able to provide her relating to the color of her dress, she would give me a complimentary package of this nectar of the gods. I guess I have joined Lydia in being a trader in Purple!