Spider Webs

Every night when I go to the main house to eat supper it gets dark before I head back towards my house. Darkness comes much earlier here than at home and when it gets dark, it is really dark. I have been surprised several nights walking back to my room that in the brief time since I walked over to eat, industrious spiders have spun invisible webs across the path I have to walk, usually just about head high, coming down from the dark mango trees you have to walk under.

In case you've never had the experience, there's nothing quite like having a huge, sticky spider web envelop your entire head on a dark African night. Honestly, it brings back images of Indiana Jones hacking his way through spider webs as he climbs through caves, only he can see the spider webs and you can't over here at night. Inevitably when Indy turns around there is a huge spider planted right in the middle of his back. Well that's the feeling I get every time I walk through one of the webs over here. For the rest of the night after face-planting in one of these gargantuan webs I rub my head, shoulders and back trying to get the web off (I'm doing it right now as I write this). What's more, the entire time I have the eerie feeling that I'm about to brush a hairy five pound spider off my back [shudder].

I remember a sermon illustration I heard Andy Stanley use once about spider webs. He compared sin to spider webs. He pointed out how sin is sticky like a spider web and how it seems to cling to you when you encounter it. He also pointed out that no one walks through a spider web and then calmly says, "Oh, I must've walked through a spider web." No, you do one of those "get-those-spiders-off-me" dance, or the more common, "get-those-#%$@*-spiders-off me" dance. As with spider webs, you can never seem to get all the sin off of you. Every time you do you find another strand on your glasses or on your sleeve, or somewhere. And honestly, I have never seen webs as sticky as the spiders here in Africa spin. Maybe it's because the webs aren't dry yet when I walk through them; but you don't think you're ever going to get it all off.

Oh well, after writing this now, I'm going to have to go take a shower because now I really feel like I have spiders on me; perhaps even little spider babies or spider eggs… I'll never get to sleep if I don't. In the meantime, the next time you encounter sin, think about it like giant African spider webs on dark African nights and give it a wide berth; steer as far around it as you possibly can.