Our First Love

One day, a spider, who had found his way to the top of a barn, determined that this was the perfect spot for his web.  He dropped down with a line from the peak that was designed to support the weight of his soon-to-be made web.  He began spinning a small web at first.  Each day, he added more to the web.  He realized that the bigger the web, the more incredible it appeared and the more efficient he could be at catching his food.  The bigger the web he created, the more pride he took in all that he had accomplished.  One day, after a considerable amount of time had passed since he had arrived at the barn, the spider decided to take a journey back to the peak to look out.  As he climbed up the line to the peak, he suddenly found himself wondering why there was this seemingly useless strand was hanging from the peak.  It certainly wasn’t adding to the beauty of the web.  In fact, it seemed out of place to the spider, so he decided that it needed to be gotten rid of.  He climbed to the top of the line and cut it.  What followed was that the gigantic web, his greatest pride, collapsed to the floor of the barn taking the spider with it.

Have you accomplished anything in this life that you take great pride in that has perhaps caused you to forget the reason you were able to accomplish these things?  It can be easy at times to be so focused on the lives we weave together out of what we perceive to be our own intellect and ability that we can forget about the foundation that holds all things together.  Just as the spider forgot his first love of the site he picked to build, so, too, can time and distractions cause us to forget our first love.

Father, I pray that in every thing we do, in the decisions we make, in the way we relate to one another, in the way we operate our lives, that we let Christ be at the center.