The Spider in the Bathtub
I was getting ready to take a bath and was rinsing out the tub when a little spider came out of one of the jets. It was disturbed by the water and tried to get up the slick walls. I took my back brush and held it before the little crawler. It got on it, but the moment I started to lift it up and out, it jumped right off. I tried again, the spider’s reaction was the same, going on the brush and jumping off. After the second rescue attempt, it didn’t even want to get on the brush any more; instead it ran around looking for a way out. It was avoiding the brush now and was running from it.
Patiently I tried again and again, but after about five minutes I decided that nothing was going to make the little guy take my offer. I plugged up the tub and opened the water faucet. The water started filling the tub, but due to the uneven surface it surrounded the spider on all sides. I turned off the faucet and put my back brush in the bottom of the tub one more time. This time the little fellow climbed on without any struggle and stayed on until I dropped it safely outside.
Watching this I thought about how we humans are much like the little spider. Many times we don’t see the big picture and we are not willing to take God’s help when He offers it. He has to apply harder measures before we are willing to pay attention. It’s not only that we are not willing to take His help; we are just too busy relying on ourselves and exhausting all our resources before ever looking up to Him. In the process we get stressed out, confused, and then our minds really don’t work that well any more. We make bad decisions, make mistakes, and think emotionally rather than objectively – we simply give ourselves into the hands of the enemy.
In life there are always only two options: God or the enemy. Yes, life is black or white. There isn’t much grey present; we rather slip in and out of His presence. We may be lucky (if there is such a thing for a Christian?) to somehow get out of a bad situation, but really – it’s not our own doing, definitely not the help of the enemy, much more likely by the Grace of God. By doing it our way we are just wasting a lot of our precious energy. To get something accomplished we need to keep our focus on God.
So many times in life God is trying to get our attention, we miss it if we are not walking close to Him and then we wonder why our lives are so messed up and why bad things happen. Then we say: ”How could God do this to me?” And yes, God is a good God and it’s rather a wake-up call for us to follow His lead. Just like the little spider that was about to get drowned, we just never see the whole picture. All that it probably saw was a lot of torture with a back brush.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
and your ways are not my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts. ”