Spiritual Thought

This week for seminary, I'm conducting. This basically means I welcome everybody, announce the song and choose who gets to say the prayer. Tomorrow I also have to give a spiritual thought. Last time I really liked my spiritual thought, and this time, I dont' want to just get up there and read my favourite scripture like everyone else. I think I'm going to end up doing something like that though.

Last time, I told the class a story about a soilder that I heard when on Seal Island. Seal Island is basically a tiny island off the southern shore of Nova Scotia. My family used to own all of it, but my Great Aunt Mary sold part of it because she couldn't afford the mortage or something like that. The island is still considered (not legally) to be pretty much ours though, and I'm probably going to inherit some of it. Enough to build a summer house anyways.
Since there are so few people who are on the island at one time, there's only one church. It's "Seal Island's Church of all faiths", even though it's sporting a nice, white cross on top of a steeple on the roof. It really is a Christian church, and that's not a problem, I don't think anybody's ever had a need for anything but a Christian church on the island.
So this lady told this story on a Sunday we were there and I really liked it, this is basically how it went.

There was a group of soilders traveling by foot through a small area of enemy territory. Their intentions were merely to get to their outpost some miles ahead and they had no intention of hurting anybody. In fact they had lost all but a few guns because of certain incidents. John was not one of the soilders lucky enough to be holding a gun.
They knew they were getting close to their destination soon, so they were letting themselves relax a bit, which of course was the perfect queue for an ambush, and guess what happened? Armed enemy soilders came streaming out of the mountains beside them.
Before any of the tired soilders could even begin to break into a sprint they were overwhelmed by the force of the opposition. John was the only one to get away.
He didn't even know why he was bothering to run. Where was he going? The outpost was out of sight and he was exhausted, unlike the enemy soilders. He was outnumbered and everybody but him had a gun. The only thing he could think to do was run into the cover of the surrounding trees and search for a place to hide.
After a moment of frantic searching he came upon a small cave, barely big enough for him to fit into. He worked hard to steady his breathing and waited for the enemy to pass by. There was no way they'd miss him. They had probably seen almost exactly where he had gone and they knew he wouldn't have been able to go far. Without anything left for him to do, John prayed silently. He prayed that somehow the soilders wouldn't find him, which he knew would involve the involvement of a miracle.
He waited, and as he waited her heard the muffled commands of the enemy soilders. Phrases like "No prisoners" and "He'll wish he'd never been born" added to his anxiety. All he could do was wait for that miracle from God.
The answer to his prayers came in the form of a little spider. The spider crawled from outside the cave and began to weave a web in over the openeing of the cave, inches in front of John's face. Although the spider was going at an impossible speed, John worried it would not be able to finish in time. He silently urged it to hurry, then realized how stupid he was being.
"I don't need a spider web, I need a brick wall!" He thought impatiently.
He thought it was a joke. Maybe God was mocking him, or trying to get him to laugh one last time before he died. Whatever was going through his head immediately stopped as the spider finished just in time for a booted foot to stomp down in front of the cave.
John held his breath as he heard a voice.
"Jackson, check that cave!"
"There's no need Sir, there's a spider web covering it. If anybody had gone in there they would have broken it,"
"Very well then, look elsewhere,"
For a moment John laid there, in complete shock. He had been too much of a fool not to realize that through the power of God, a spider web can be stronger than a brick wall.

So yeah, I liked that story a lot, just kinda clarifies the moral that people often think gOd is being cruel when really he's testing our faith and/or saving us.