Diamonds are among the rarest and most beautiful substances found on earth. Another facet (pun intended) of their beauty is the diversity of their application. Diamonds are the hardest natural substance on the planet (able to cut through most others). This makes them applicable for industrial uses such as drilling, cutting and boring. Few things on earth have this combination of characteristics - being both immensely beautiful and incredibly tough. I want to suggest that there are some insights we can gain by considering the characteristics of a diamond. Perhaps it is even possible that God gave us diamonds as clues about ours lives and to help us better understand the purposes for His dealings in our lives. One of the first things to consider is that the beauty and toughness of diamonds comes with a high price. Diamonds start out as carbon that reside between 70-125 miles below the earth's surface (in the mantle - although recent discoveries suggest that it is possible for them to form in sedimentary rock). They were often located near volcanic sites where pressure was particularly high. There, they endured enormous heat and intense pressures for a lengthy period of time (between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years). The pressure and heat caused the carbon molecules to crystallize into tetrahedral shapes that are bonded with four other carbon molecules. The molecules are densely packed together (due to the pressure they endured so long). The density, the shape and bonding translates into the hardest substance on earth. 
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