When I was seven or eight, the man next door to my grandmother died of a black widow spider bite.  I was young and impressionable and the impression I had was that this kind of spider was deadly.  The next year, a black widow spun her web by our back porch and hatched hundreds of babies.  I remember when I found the web I was very frightened.  I had visions of all those babies growing up and biting people.  I found my father and he took care of it.  I am not afraid of spiders as a whole, but once you have seen a full grown black widow, you won't forget it. They are the blackest of black with a red hourglass on their under side.

It was forty years before I saw another one.  I was in my back yard paving a walk to our shed with bricks when I noticed that the bricks had a multitude of black widows in the holes in their sides.  I was very, very glad I had not been bitten.  I dispatched them all !!   And decided I better figure out where they liked to spin their webs, and more importantly, what their webs looked like.  I learned.  Because I was afraid of them.

They like dark, damp hidden spots.  Their webs have no pattern and are messy, and stringy.  Stretching in an irregular pattern--usually close to the ground.  With the spider hidden from view.  Waiting.

Yesterday, as I was sitting on my back porch, I saw that familiar web, close to my back door.  I would be able to recognize one of their webs even in my sleep.  I sprayed the web with a bug killer, and this morning the spider had crawled out into the open, out from under a rock.  She was done for.

Sin is like a black widow spider.  It likes to hide in our lives.  I likes dark places.   And its bite is fatal.
James 1: 12a, 13-14 "Blessed is the person that endures temptation….Let no one say, (when he is tempted) I am tempted by God:  for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does he tempt anyone.  But every person is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed...which brings forth sin and sin, when it is finished brings forth death." (I have edited these verses--removing old English.)

The point is, when you and I do wrong, it has a name.  Sin.  It's a black widow spider weaving a web in our lives.  You know what is wrong with you.  You might as well talk to God about it.  He knows it anyway.  I have to do that regularly. Thank God for Christ who died for our sins.