The Spider Had a Heart Attack

At least I think he must have! A woman's piercing scream can trepidate the bravest heart!

Over a forty year period of pastoring the Wesleyan Church in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and residing in the fine, but very old, parsonage the good parishoners graciously provided for our family, I was privileged to nearly completely remodel and enlarge it. The project at the time was completely stripping and remodeling the upstairs. Since this was the bedrooms of our three children - as well as that of a dear niece who was living with us while attending our local college - the four of them had been relocated to hastily fixed up bedrooms in the basement.

At that time, the basement was unfinished - bare concrete walls, a very uneven concrete floor and no ceiling on the floor joists. This resulted in the mutual residence of various kinds of critters from time to time.

Our family became rather accustomed to "sharing space with them".

On this occasion I was upstairs mentally and physically completely absorbed in some carpentry procedure when the atmosphere of all three floors of the parsonage was jarringly pierced by not just one scream, but a series of them! I instantly flew down both sets of stairs and witnessed a once in a lifetime scenario of our niece vigorously jumping up and down, all the while screaming, "There's a spider! There's a spider!" The spider was rather uncerimoniously dispatched, and I sternly said to her, "Norma, (not her real name) in this house the only time we scream like this is if there is something wrong".

The point in this story - that is, other than raising the hair on my head and significantly elevating my adrenelin - is that her jumping up and down and screaming accomplished nothing. It was a futile waste of time.

A time waster is a life waster. All of us do this, but when we realize it, wise and thoughtful persons stop it, for we realize just how precious time is. Probably the most significant aspect of the passing of time is that it cannot be recovered once it is spent.

A cheering aspect of time is that God has graciously endowed each individual with equal portions, and places its precious value in each person's control. Every segment of time is like the treasure of a sunset - each one is different, each one can be personally enjoyed and used, and each one is quickly gone forever, never to be visited again.