“The spider [takes] hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.”
Proverbs 30:28
While most of us don’t particularly care for spiders, they are an interesting example of how God “hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:27), because no one fully understands how spiders function.
Have you ever watched a spider spinning its web? You may wonder where the silk thread comes from. It comes from silk glands in its abdomen. The liquid silk is forced through its spinnerets as the spider moves. Most spiders have two to six spinnerets, each with a different opening. These produce the different kinds of silk needed. For instance, when the spider needs a dragline for lifting itself up and down, it uses a spinneret that makes a coarse, strong silk. When making its web, an entirely different type of silk is required, and it uses other spinnerets. It also produces cottony silk for holding and hiding its eggs. Some silk glands produce liquid silk that becomes dry outside the body, while others produce sticky silk that remains sticky. All spiders spin silk, but not all spiders make webs.
How did the spider learn to use the correct spinneret for a certain kind of silk? How did it learn to use two spinnerets at the same time when it needs extra-strong silk? How can it travel with ease over sticky silk that will trap everything else?
The spider, lurking at one side of its web, waits for vibrations to signal that something is caught in the web. If the vibrations are very light, it ignores them. But medium vibrations mean food, so it hurries across the web to kill and eat the victim. However, if the vibrations are strong, it means something too large to handle is out there, and the spider will quickly cut the victim loose before it ruins the web. How does the spider know how to interpret these signals?
Here is the answer to all of these questions. Spiders did not have to “learn” how to make a web or where to place it. When the Lord God created them, He gave them these remarkable skills. These skills are often called instincts, and these enable them to live their remarkable lives.
If the Lord God has such interest and care over these little creatures which are here today and gone tomorrow, how much greater is His concern for every boy and girl to whom He has given an everlasting soul. He tells us, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31:3). This wonderful love caused Him to go to the cross to die, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Have you accepted that work in faith and made Him your Saviour?
ML-05/04/2003