With Great Power comes Great Responsibility

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

  I was saving this blog for down the road but todays events had me reconsider this. Some may remember this quote from Spider Man, “ With great power, comes great responsibility”.. Peter Parker’s Uncle says this to him in the movie. I think this is a very accurate statement for all Christians to take into their hearts and souls. When I wasn’t actively pursuing God. I still knew this was part of me. This message of Him I was given was my responsibility to live and share. It didn’t matter that I wanted nothing to do with that responsibility, I was still going to be held to it because I knew it. 

     There is a deeper connection as well with todays blog because as strange as this sounds spiders and their webs have played some crazy lessons I have learned from God. Yes, spiders are not the cute cuddly image you would think God would use to get a message across but like I have said God knows that way wouldn’t get me to listen but He uses spiders and He gets my attention. 

       About eight or so years when I was very active in my faith and church I was having a hard time letting people in and seeing that God had put people in front of me to help me along the way. A small group of us was leaving after prayer group and one girl walked into a huge web and flipped out. Hands waving, yelling the whole bit. When she did this her rosary ring came off and was lost somewhere in the  grass. It was almost midnight and we kept looking for hours and during this we were talking about what was my problem with letting people in. As the sun was starting to come up I stopped and thought “ This is right in front of us. We are just missing it and its right here”. Then it hit me and I stopped and thought just like some of my friends. They are right in front of me to help and I just didn’t see it. As that thought came out of my mouth , another friend says “I found it. It was right here” and we all looked in that area, it wasn’t hidden in grass, it was just there on the dirt in plain sight. If she didn’t walk into that web, then that lesson wouldn’t have helped me understand what was in front of me. 

        Around that same time, I was sitting outside and I started to watch as this spider spun his web. It was fascinating how they build their webs. So detailed. Everything is attached to one another in some way. Time passed by and I looked again at the web and saw that some part of the trees little twig were stuck in the web and there was another spot where there was a hole. I was looking at the spider waiting for him to fix the whole but instead he went to the twig and cut it out of the web and then went back to the center of the web for a while. Of course I had to say “ What a stupid spider, your should of just fixed when you were there”. Then after some more time he came down fixed the web and was back in the center. This started to get me to think that (at that time in my life) the web is like our lives. We take all this time to make all these connections, build our life off of those connections and try to keep those connections. Then something comes along and causes those connections to fail and we are no longer connected and even sometimes have to cut something or someone out of those connections in our lives to make others stronger. It then occurred to me that as the spider went to the center to wait to repair those wholes in his web, we have to do the same. We need to go to the center of our souls to God to get the strength to repair the damage in our lives and without Him it won’t be as easy to do so. 

   Since those times spiders pop up in my life. It is not always as the insect but could be a picture, the car, the word, etc... If it was  always the eight legged version I don’t think it would be as much of a message as I would start to get freaked out. I know it isn’t a typical way some people would get the message but it does work. Today as I left work there was something on my passenger side mirror but thought it was just a leaf stuck in there and drove home. I needed to go back out and as I was pulling out of my spot, I noticed that leaf was a spider and it was crawling around and then hanging off the mirror as I was driving. It hung on and moved back onto the mirror and when I got out of the car I gently pushed it off and went in the store but as i came out and got in again, there he was again on the mirror. 

    So, I say “ Ok, what’s the message here.” Then i started to think ok, I will post those stories about spiders tonight and then it also seemed to me that the spider was on the mirror that shows you what you just passed and whats coming from behind and side of you. Hmmmm. maybe I have to remember where I came from and not just look ahead because you just don’t know what may come from behind to get you off course. I also think of last week when I went to a christian concert that a spider was crawling on a friend and think, was that just a way of me knowing He is there?

     I know spiders are not the conventional way God would speak to most of us but for some reason it seems to be mine. Maybe I over analyzed it all and it was just a spider but, after each of those times I think of God and it makes me smile and say “ Ok, I hear You and I will work on it”. So, as long as I get a message of change then I am going to go with it. 

      Until the next blog, God Bless and remember know it’s all our responsibilities.