Words of Worth

Can You See It?

August 17, 2013

Over the last couple of weeks, Sheryl and I have exchanged emails, phone calls, texts, books and some pictures of spider webs. Oh? Didn’t see that one coming? Of all the things we could share with each other, why would we share photos of spider webs? No particular reason – other than one morning I was out walking and across the fields shimmering in the early sunlight I saw thousands of little tiny dew laced webs. They were visible for over a hundred yards and I stopped to think about all the spiders that had worked so hard during the night spinning and spinning and spinning. Yes, I love the book Charlotte’s Web and yes, I read it to both my children.
And yes, I am a little afraid of spiders but that day, in the glow of the eastern sun rising over the cow pasture (yes, I live next to a cow pasture now) I was in awe.

I mentioned the morning’s event to Sheryl and she responded, “Did I send you the picture I took of the spider web in the window of my room in Switzerland?” Did I mention I saw my spider webs in a cow pasture in Tennessee? Not in the Alps?

Anyway, she had not sent the photo but I actually had one to send her I had taken at the edge of the field. Later, she replied she couldn’t see the web in the field. I laughed and told her that the spider web was actually between the branches. She didn’t see it because she didn’t know where to look.

Later I received a picture of her little Swiss Army Spider along with the comment, “You have to look really hard in the upper left hand corner to see it.” Before I had time to write back, Sheryl send another photo she had enlarged to help me focus in on the web. But here’s the thing: I was able to see the web in the first picture because I knew what I was looking for and where to look. When I sent my spider web picture, Sheryl looked past the two sticks in the foreground and into the field because in my earlier email, I only mentioned all the webs on the ground. Can you see it?

photo

Don’t we often miss the forest for the trees?
Or miss the blessings God has for us because our minds are consumed with other and sometimes, lesser things?

I love the way God speaks with me. Later that very day in a devotion book I read this quote: “Do we not continually pass by blessings innumerable without notice and instead fix our eyes on what we feel to be our trials and our losses and think and talk about these, until our whole horizon is filled with them and we almost begin to think we have no blessings at all?”

I knew He was teaching me through those spider webs to look past my current distractions and look forward in hope on His promises. He’s not just “some God”, He is the Creator God – giver of life and all good things. (ct)

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” Hebrews 12:1-2