Spider Webs and Christians

I'm posting from home today, in between dozing off and watching some decent classic t.v. (In The Heat of The Night circa 1988 just went off) after my surgery yesterday. Everything went well, and expect to be two-hand typing by the week's end! For now, though, the right hand has it, and I'm finishing up Philippians 1.

For the past week or so, we keep finding small spider webs in our van. No spiders yet, but just one or two small webs each day...we're going to vacuum and spray tomorrow. If you know Annette, and her immense dislike of spiders, it should tell you that this really isn't a big deal, the webs are more an annoyance than anything else. We've all walked into webs at some point and know how nasty and annoying they can be, but if you study a bit about how the spiders use their webs, it's pretty neat.

There's an Ethiopian Proverb that says: "When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion." Paul, here at the end of Chapter 1, is encouraging the church to work in unity in the same way that a spider web works. The annoying small webs found in our van are not strong enough to capture or maintain anything larger than a common fly. But, if many spider webs are built together and used in conjunction to capture one main objective, then they have some real strength! Paul is telling the church at Philippi to work together, to unite their strength and work together in order to be a strong testimony for Christ. He states that he wants their conduct to be worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and to bind them together with "one mind."

Paul, and the early believers, faced the difficult task of spreading the Gospel to people who didn't really want to listen...sound familiar? We, as the Church today, face the same task that he faced 2,000 years ago, and we must work together as believers to stand strong, to be that testimony of the Gospel to those we are trying to reach. We must unite our webs in order to bind the lion!

PJ