Little 'Piders

I’m not sure there is any big, spiritual lesson in this, but I continue to think about it, so I’ll write about it, too.

Yesterday I attended a musical at a church. There was a quiet time in the program, where people were invited to pray where they sat, and as I was meditating on something that had just been said, I had my eyes closed. When my eyes opened, my gaze landed on the bright yellow shirt of a gentleman sitting slightly to my right, about five rows in front of me. Maybe I noticed this only because his shirt was such a bright yellow, but there was a cute little black spider crawling around on the back of his shoulders. I couldn’t say or do anything without creating a huge disruption, so while everyone else was (presumably) praying big, spiritual prayers, I sat there praying that this spider wouldn’t crawl up and bite this guy’s neck, or crawl down into his shirt, or something equally disturbing.

The spider went up to the fellow’s collar, and perhaps when he reached the short hairs on his neck, created a tickle. The man brushed at his hair, as we tend to do when we feel such tickles, and the spider retreated down his back. The danger wasn’t past, though! Next the little critter travelled sideways, and jumped on the shoulder of the guy’s wife. Uh-oh. The intensity of my prayer increased along with my heart-rate. The spider repeated the procedure, and as soon as he got up to her hair, she brushed at her hair and the spider retreated. This time he went all the way to the back of the pew, and I watched in relief as he scooted away to where no people were sitting.

Perhaps I should have been most struck by the fact that God seems to have answered a most insignificant prayer. Instead, I’m most impressed by the fact that these two people will never know that they had a spider crawling on their backs. It wasn’t, I’m sure, a poisonous spider, so we are not talking here about deadly danger. Very few people like to have spiders crawling on them (I am not personally acquainted with anyone who does) and I cannot imagine that anyone would be happy to have a spider, say, crawl down their back, inside their shirt, during a touching moment of a church service.

And they’ll never know.

As I said, I’m not sure there is any great lesson here, but I wonder how many times we, literally or figuratively, brush away a little tickle, and don’t realize that we’ve chased away something much more significant than that. I once made a phone call half an hour after one office closed, which forced me to call a different office of the same company, which completely changed the course of my life.

It happens. Life isn’t always about big events; sometimes our lives are changed—for better or worse—by little ‘piders.

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