Spider Webs

I was having one of those days… the kind we all have from time to time.  One of those draining days where you can’t quite pinpoint what exactly is bothering you, but you know it’s there.  Something doesn’t feel right.  Something’s off.  God feels miles and miles away.  He’s silent.  You are desperate for an answer and more than anything you need Him to remind you of who you are.

I knew, on this particular day, that in order to get to the bottom of this funk I was in, I had to get alone with God.  As difficult as it was to convince my brain (and my list of a gazillion to-do list items), I grabbed my bible and phone, and sat down outside on my back porch. 

Closing my eyes, I was able to hear the sounds of spring.  I hadn’t realized with my eyes open how loudly the birds were singing.  In the stillness and silence of my soul, I uttered the question I desperately needed answered: “Is my life significant?” 

It startled me at first, but then I realized that it was the very thing I needed God to clarify.  Behind that simple question, a floodgate of others gushed out. 

Does the life that I’m living count for something? 

Is the job you’ve asked me to do for me alone? 

If I mess it up, will you just find someone else who can do it better? 

Do I matter?

I opened my eyes and this teeny tiny orange spider was staring back at me.  I was sitting with my knees pulled up to my chest, and right there, perched on the tip-top of my knee was this strange creature.  He was the smallest spider I’d ever seen, bright orange with a shiny round body and short legs.  I watched him for a bit before deciding a better place for him to crawl was on the ground.   

Then, I noticed another spider crawling up the arm of my chair.  This spider was bigger, with a longer body and long front legs.  Its body was the same brown speckled color as the chair.  When the third spider, yet a different kind, came along I figured I better pay attention. 

I grabbed my phone and typed in the word “spider” in the search line of my bible concordance.  I couldn’t think of any references to spiders, so I was surprised when my search located exactly two places in the entire bible that refer to a spider.  It didn’t take me long to identify the root of the emptiness I was feeling.

Such is the destiny of all who forget God;
    so perishes the hope of the godless.  
What they trust in is fragile;
    what they rely on is a spider’s web.  
They lean on the web, but it gives way;
    they cling to it, but it does not hold.

  Job 8:13-15

While I don’t normally consider myself to be godless, the “all who forget God” certainly seemed familiar to me.  And I knew that feeling of hope lost.  I’ve heard it said that every human heart is an idol-making factory.  We so easily take our eyes off Jesus and try to find our worth in smaller things; things that will never satisfy us; things that don’t last and were never meant to be our source of hope.  While I recognized that God was showing me that I was the reason He felt far away, I only felt love and acceptance as He gently turned my gaze back to Him.

Jesus came to set the captives free because we are a people who create our own prisons.  Every idol we manufacture in life is a direct path to slavery.  I’m not talking about worshiping the little plastic gods; I’m talking good stuff.  Godly things even.  Family can be an idol if it’s where we find our value.  Any relationship that is more important than the one we have with God is an idol.  Years ago, my pursuit of motherhood was an idol that kept me in bondage for years.  I was convinced that I was a nobody until I could be called “Mom.”  I still struggle with my need to please people, responding to others’ approval of me and ignoring what pleases God.  I want recognition.  I crave acceptance.  And Jesus has already given all of those things to me.

Jesus came to tear down every idol we create.  He knows they are as fragile and flimsy as a spider’s web.  The problem is that as soon as we recognize that we’ve made an idol and allow Him to rescue us, it is only a matter of time before our hearts start whittling away at another one.  This is where I get stuck.  I rationalize that if the work I’m doing is for God then it is alright if I lose myself in it.  But it is still another something that I’ve allowed to capture my heart rather than God.

Last month I read probably the best parenting book out there:  Grace Based Parenting.  The message is simple- model our relationships with our children after the way God treats us- with an abundance of grace.  The author talks about three basic needs that children have:  strength, security, and significance.  In fact, all of us were born with these three needs. 

In verse 15, we see how security and strength can never be found in anything other than God.  They lean on the web, but it gives way- our security is found in God when we chose to trust Him.  Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”  My understanding or perception is radically different from God’s reality.  That is why He urges us to lean on Him and find our security in Him. 

The next part address our need for strength:  they cling to it, but it does not hold.  We are all searching for something or someone to hold us, to be our strength.  The Hebrew word used for hold is quwm, which means to endure, sustain, or prevail.  It is the same word used to describe Jesus in Psalm 113:7:  “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes.”  Only Jesus has the strength to reach down to us where we are, covered in dirt and so unworthy, and lift us out of the mess we’ve created and give us the grace we don’t deserve.  He does the lifting.  He does the delivering.  We have nothing to do with it other than creating a need to be rescued.

I turned in my bible to the second place the word “spider” is found.

They spin a spider’s web… Their cobwebs are useless for clothing;
    they cannot cover themselves with what they make.

Isaiah 59:5,6

The King James Version translates verse 6, neither shall they cover themselves with their works.  The word used for “works” is ma aseh which means labor, business, pursuit, undertaking or work of God.  I thought about that question I had taken to God: “Is my life significant?” 

The reason that I was struggling so was that I had allowed what I was doing to become my source of significance.  Isaiah clearly states that our work, even work for God, can never truly cover us.  Because I had recently studied chapter 61 a few pages over, I made a connection.

A cobweb- flimsy, dirty and full of holes- was never what God intended us to wear when He sent Jesus to free us.  He is a better covering, one that will guarantee our significance as children of the one true King.

I delight greatly in the Lord;
    my soul rejoices in my God.  
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
    and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Isaiah 61:10

I needed to be reminded that my security, strength, and significance cannot be found in anything I am doing, but only in what Jesus has already done.

With tears in my eyes, I let these amazing truths sink down into my soul, and I thanked Jesus for bringing my attention back to Him.  In that moment, the sun shone on the thin threads of a spider web that were hovering over my chair.  I had seen the spiders, but missed the web above my head.  Jesus, the Light of the world, reveals those webs that so easily entangle us, and He will show us the way out of them when we get trapped.

Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. 

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.   ~Hebrews 12:1-2 (emphasis mine)