I returned home from my walk a couple mornings ago just in time to watch a spider spin its web. Each movement was careful and the placement of the silk was exact. Spider legs often creep me out, but this time they were graceful and captured my attention. It was easy to tell that the spider was designed to spin a web.
As I continued to watch it circle the structure it was creating, carefully repeating its steps again and again, it struck me that this spider must get pretty tired of the same routine each day. Spin a web, sit on it, wait for a bug, kill the bug, drink its blood. That's the spider's life. It sounds extremely boring and monotonous but that's what God created it to do. And each time the spider does it, it brings glory to its Maker.
I then thought about my life. I quickly grow tired of the dull tasks in each day and long for a change of pace, a new adventure - something to get me out of the routine. It hit me recently how I'm often looking forward or rushing ahead to the next big thing in life, thinking it will be more important and more exciting than today. After all, a lot of life is organized in a way that points us to the next thing. We want more, want to move on, and experience something new.
This past week, I figured out school for this year and grew anxious for what the year would hold. It hit me though, while I was dreaming of what was to come, that I don't exist for those "next things". Even though our lives are working towards the next thing...school, getting married, having kids, etc...we exist to bring praise and glory to the King today. I'm not created to be satisfied in the next things when they come. I'm designed to be satisfied only in Jesus. It's great to plan and push towards the next thing and it's often hard work, but it's greater and sometimes harder to remember to worship Jesus today, when things are going slow and I'm constantly doing seemingly meaningless tasks.
A spider spins its web and glorifies Jesus doing so. It doesn't have a "next thing", that I know of anyway. Like me, it was designed to bring glory to Jesus. I ought not let the next thingsin my life get in the way of my worshiping Jesus today. That's what it's about. Jesus.
I may never even get to the next thing, but may today's "spinning of a web" be pleasing to Jesus.
1 messages:
So I went to Solid Rock this last Saturday night, and John Mark shared about Paul's life story as we started a series on 1 Corinthians. One of the points that he made hit home pretty deep and it related to your post here. He talked about how long Paul had to wait before his ministry took off. Apparently, scholars think it was like 15+ years after his conversion before he went on his big missionary journeys and such. John Mark shared how we so often try to overachieve in life, trying to fit God's plan into our own. It was pretty convicting when he pointed out how that was such a wrong viewpoint. We should be wanting, asking, and being patient for God to take our life and shape it and work it into His plan. Anyways, this post reminded me of that. A good reminder to keep a correct focus. On Jesus.
If you got an extra hour sometime, give it a listen: http://www.ajesuschurch.org/teachings/teaching/?id=788&c=41
You should for sure come down there with us sometime.
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