1st Sunday Devotional – Spiderwebs

The spider skillfully grasps with its hands, and it is in kings’ palaces. …Proverbs 30:28 (NKJ)

One of the things that are especially fun to see when I go walking on the farm in the early morning while the dew is heavy on the grass are the spiderwebs. Sometimes before the hay is cut in the field, I see dozens of spiderwebs between the blades of grass and hay weeds. The spiderwebs are surely there during the other hours of the day too, but the dew traces the strands of the web to make them more visible. Sometimes the dew can look like jewels in the morning sunlight.

Poetry is a fresh morning spiderweb telling a story of moonlight hours of weaving and waiting during a night. (Carl Sandburg)

I’ve written before on here about spiderwebs and how writing a story can be compared to webmaking. If you want to read that, here’s the link.

For this post, I’m taking a different path, because not long ago when I was out walking among those spiderwebs and trying to avoid destroying the spider’s work, I thought of how different many of the webs were. And how different the spiders.

You might not be a spider fan. Can’t say as I want one crawling around on me or dropping down in front of my face, but I do admire their web making and their perseverance to catch their dinner.

The web up top is more like what we think about when we are asked to describe or draw a spiderweb. It has rounds of webbing and sections to perhaps make it stronger. I’m not a webmaking expert like the spiders, so I’m not sure about that. What I am sure about is that each spider was created in its own special way to make its own special web and find its place in the world of nature.

Take a look at the web this little red spider made. It doesn’t have that nice neat webbing but looks like the spider went on a dizzy fit of spinning and had no idea what it was doing. It was just trying to make everything hook to something. But that’s not so. I’ve seen many of these every which way webs. They are all similar and so it’s plain that the spider is making its web just the way it is supposed to make it. Its design is different.

Then there are the spiders that build their dense web around a hole in the grass and lurk out of sight waiting for the unwary bug to land on its web.  Can you imagine how long it might take a spider to weave such a web?

Then there are what we sometimes call the garden spiders that build large round webs that always have these middle what look like tacking stitches that a seamstress might make to make sure the stitches don’t come loose.

The many different spiders and the many different webs show the diversity in the spider world. Among us humans the diversity is even more profound. Every person has their unique fingerprints, their unique DNA. Some of us are tall. Some are short. Some sing with heaveinly voices. Others of us can’t carry a tune in a bucket. We might have a gift for words or be a whiz at math. We might love making the world more beautiful by planting flowers or we might try to preserve the natural beauty in the wild. Some people have a knack for making friends. Others are more reserved.

The point I’m trying to make is that we are all different but we are still people just as the spiders are different but are still spiders. The Lord made us and the spiders that way for a purpose.

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. …1 Corinthians 12:4 (NKJ)

We can admire and appreciate the gifts others have been given while we fully accept and use our own gifts as the Lord intends. I’ve heard some people say they have no gifts, but that isn’t true. We might not have the kind of gift that gets us great attention, but what about a gift for kindness or understanding? Some have a gift for prayer. Others for taking care of children or cleaning the church or visiting the lonely. I could go on and on about the many ways we can make the world better. The Lord has given people that diversity of gifts for the good of us all.

Do you admire spiderwebs? What are some characteristics of people that you think are a special gift?