As of November 2023, there are over 53,000 different identified species of spiders running around this big blue planet we call home. There are, on average, over a million spiders in a single acre of land. In fact, we are almost certainly less than ten feet from a spider right this minute. However, for all their fantastic numbers, 99.9 percent of spiders are absolutely harmless to humans. And even those very few that are dangerous may not necessarily harm us if they bite.
Spiders can control the amount of venom they inject, so we don’t necessarily stand to get a total dose of poison with every spider bite. It takes them a substantial amount of time to produce a whole load of venom, and they don’t deplete it if they don’t utterly need to. When we encounter a spider, they nearly always just want us to go away and forget we have ever seen them. We will never know they are there unless we happen to roll over on one in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, this is precisely what I managed to do recently.
I woke up feeling vaguely flu-like and with a painful, angry-looking, walnut-sized boil on my lower stomach. Prayer and my dear wife’s substantial first-aid skills had the boil essentially gone in forty-eight hours. I slept a lot for a day and then was back on my feet.
What I found most interesting about all this was that I had been reading through the book of Job and about the boils that covered his body from “the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.” Now, I had dealt with acne as a teenager, but this glowering and wrathful boil was light-years beyond simple acne. I could not imagine being engulfed in them as Job was. One was painful enough. It brought to life the unimaginable suffering of Job, not just in his body at this point, but the previous loss of his children, servants, flocks, and property. And it vividly illuminated Job’s patience and love of God.
It was interesting to have the words of the Bible come to life as they did, even if it was painful. I admit that far too often, as I do my daily Bible reading, the words of our Lord slip by my eyes without ever penetrating my heart. Occasionally, my eyes simply surf through the verses and chapters, sometimes even skipping ahead to see how much more I have to read.
Forgive me, Father, I must do better. It is up to me to take the life in your Word and sow it where it will grow.
Ask yourself what you can do to better plant the Word of our Lord in your heart.
Kevin Spencer likes to play with words, help others play with them, and is privileged to be a staff writer for Christian Devotions. He lives with his beautiful blessing of a wife, Charlotte, and his amazing collegiate grandson, Caleb.