I Can’t

It was a desperate and loathsome time.  Fear seemed to tighten it’s satanic coils around the young man’s chest with every breath.  He struggled to remain calm in the suffocating darkness, but his lungs burned and his muscles twitched with panic induced terror.  He was alone, and straining to keep his emotions from overcoming his rational senses.  With each gulp of air, he swallowed hard to force the wretched bile of dread back to the depths of his empty stomach.  The cave he had slipped into was not much bigger than an enlarged hole.  There could have been all kinds of venomous snakes and insects in the foreboding blackness, but the young man thought nothing of the creepy-crawly things.  At this point, death via a lethal dose of venom was more of a pleasantry and welcomed thought.

Very little light reached the back of the den-like cave despite it’s diminutive size.  Only the mouth of the cave’s entrance was illuminated by the persistent rays of light permeating the depths of the jungle foliage.  The young man swallowed hard as he listened intently.  The pulsating in his chest echoed in voluminous cadence that seemed to betray his desperately needed stealthiness.  He wished for complete silence, but had little control over the throbbing in his own ears.  Like a constant war drum beating, he was sure his pounding heart would surrender his position.  He had heard random gunshots throughout the day.  They had been drawing ever closer.  His imagination didn’t need any more prodding as he envisioned the grizzly scenes being acted out beyond his immediate gloomy surroundings.  He tried not to think about it, but he knew that every reverberating gunshot hinted at another one of his buddies’ execution.  The ones being shot were the lucky ones, he imagined.  Some executions were silent except for the muffled screams.  Those were the ones where a swing of a sword severed a mans’ hands, feet, or head.  Sometimes the swing didn’t slice all the way through, and sometimes the swing wasn’t accurate at all.  Shockingly gruesome,  the horrors of war always seemed to unmask the evil hidden deep in humanity.  The young soldier shook his head in an attempt to clear the horrible images, but only succeeded in launching droplets of sweat into the darkness.  He gripped his M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle harder.  There was enough ammunition left to fight for a few seconds, but then it was over.  He knew, then, the end would come quickly.  He grimly anticipated several enemy grenades dropping into his lap through the mouth of the cave.  His death would be swift that way, he acknowledged.  Better than a beheading, he reasoned.  Yet, it was agonizingly hard to accept his own death.  He wanted to live.  He wanted to see his wife and family again.  He wanted to experience children, a job, and growing old.  He wanted to go home.  At only twenty-three years of age, there was so much more of life to live.  He sighed heavily.  Nothing short of a miracle could save him now.  There was nothing more he could do.  He had fought hard.  He had no regrets other than the dire circumstances he had been thrown into beyond his control.

When the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions landed on the beaches of Saipan, the fighting had been intense.  Chaos and thick jungles led to Division and Unit separations during the assault.  Most of his unit had stayed intact while pushing hard against the Japanese strongholds littered along the slopes of Mount Tapochau, but in the end, incurring heavy losses, his unit broke into stragglers.  Individual soldiers, low on ammunition, amidst a fortified enemy, left each man as easy prey.  The vengeance of the Japanese soldiers was brutally unleashed against each surviving Marine.  Slowly, each man was being hunted and killed.  Prisoners were not being taken.  As a young leatherneck answering the call of duty, the young man had charged uphill vehemently, but now, like most of his friends that were still breathing, he was fleeing and hiding to stay alive.  It was a game of cat and mouse, but his time was nearly expired.  He had eluded the enemy longer than he thought possible, but now he was trapped along a high ridge with Japanese soldiers scouring along both flanks.  Finding a small cave, he had accepted it as his final stand.  Probably, with morbid reflection, it would serve as his final resting spot.  It was just a matter of time before the Japanese found him.  He could hear the enemy shouting in the jungle below.  He could hear the enemy shouting on the ridge line above.  They were closing in.  Nearing his concealed underground spot, they were methodically searching every crack and crevice.

The young Marine stared at the narrow opening and pushed himself hard against the back of the cave.  He wished he could disappear.  He fully expected an alert Japanese soldier to poke his gun into the mouth of the cave and spray bullets into the darkness at any second.  The young Marine eyed a spider busily weaving a web at the cave’s opening.  He silently wished the spider was building an impenetrable brick wall instead.  With a look of defeated acceptance, he noted that the spider web offered nothing to stop the enemy’s grenades or supersonic hot metal.  Plastered against the dampness of Saipan’s humus rich soil, in the inhospitable blackness of approaching death, the young man closed his eyes and did the only thing he could.  He prayed.  “I can’t, but God, You can!”

There are very few condensed phrases that capture the whole of the Gospel quite like, “I can’t, but God, You can.”

I personally believe that one of the greatest truths proclaimed in the Word of God besides the deity of Christ is that of the New Covenant.  As an alternate way of living, the New Covenant defines a life lived with uttermost faith in Christ.  It is a life no longer under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:14).  Paul, the Apostle, referenced this New Covenant when he wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians‬ ‭2:20‬ ‭NIV‬‬).  The prophet, Ezekiel, also foretold and alluded to the New Covenant when he wrote that the Sovereign Lord would provide a new heart and a new spirit.  Through Ezekiel, God declared, “I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel‬ ‭36:26-27‬ ‭NIV‬‬).

Thus, as predicted, Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Law of Moses, and rightfully take the role as mediator and guarantor of a better covenant, the New Covenant (Mathew 5:17).

So what does all that mean as we try to apply it to our daily lives?

It means that as long as we try to live a life for God based on self effort and self sufficiency, we are operating on the premise of the Old Covenant.  And that, my friends, won’t get us very far.  The New (and better) Covenant mode of operation is to let Christ do His best through us.  That is a huge difference in perspective, but it makes all the difference in the world.  Our best will eventually, if not continually, disappoint, but God’s best will always surpass, if not illustriously exceed.  The impossible becomes possible.  It is when we reach the “end of ourselves”, having exhausted all our energy and resources, that we finally exclaim, “I can’t!”  That’s when God says, “Exactly!  I never said that you could, I only said that I would.”

Effectively, Paul wrote the same thing in Second Corinthians‬.

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,” 2 Corinthians‬ ‭1:8-10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

In extreme conditions beyond their ability to endure and despairing of life itself, Paul points out that there was nothing of themselves that they could rely upon.  Basically, Paul said, “I can’t!”  Then, graciously, the “but God” part of the equation followed, and, miraculously, Paul and his associates were delivered from deadly peril.

A few verses later Paul declares, “Our sufficiency is not of ourselves, but our sufficiency comes from God.”  (2 Corinthians‬ ‭3:5‬)‭

“I can’t, but God can!” shoots an arrow straight into the heart of legalism.  Truly successful service for the Kingdom of God will never be about what we accomplish, but about what God accomplishes through us.  The New Covenant message should ring loud and clear - “Not I, but Christ in me”.  We can do all things through Christ, and upon Him, alone, we set our hope as we march forward victoriously in His triumphal procession.

Shadows of movement flirted at the mouth of the cave.  Hushed footsteps fell against dampened soil while covertness was lost to loose pebbles, jungle debris, and whispering dialog.  The young Marine counted at least three separate voices just outside the cave opening.  He readied his aim at the spider resting in the center of it’s completed web.  The silky string pattern undulated in the tropical breeze.  It was a wonder that the spider had completed the laborious task so quickly.  Yet, at this dire moment, the young Marine had little appreciation for the spider.  The dripping despair of the brevity of life was weeping out of his pores.  His eyes burned with the liquidity of tears and sweat.  His sentence of death was fast approaching.  He expected the worst, but refused to cower in fear.  He would die facing the enemy and would fight to the end.

Frightened, the spider aggressively positioned it’s front legs in defense.  The hand of the enemy approached the web.  The young Marine’s trigger finger pulled taunt.  He held his breath.  Another hand appeared and touched the web.  Having it’s bluff called, the spider hurriedly crawled to the perimeter of the web and disappeared into a rock crevice.  Then voices intermingled into gibberish as the Japanese soldiers eased away from the cave.  The young Marine let out his breath as his pursuers moved further down the ridge line.  

The young Marine dropped to his knees in disbelief.  The undisturbed and intact spider web had fooled the enemy into believing that no one was hiding in the small cave.  Riddled with emotions, the young Marine began to cry.  “I couldn’t, but God, You did!  You delivered me via a spider web stronger than a brick wall.”

P.S.  I have heard and/or read about the spider web story a few times.  Each time it has been served with different locales, modified characters, and etched with various historical events.  Those attributes hint at legend instead of truth.  I’ve even read a tale where David was saved from King Sauls’ soldiers in such a manner (not described in the Bible by the way).  However, the following passage of Scripture is in the Bible;

“Such is the destiny of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless. What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web. They lean on the web, but it gives way; they cling to it, but it does not hold.”  Job‬ ‭8:13-15‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I find that paradoxically interesting because God loves to manifest His power through weakness.  The Lord told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians‬ ‭12:9‬ ‭NIV‬‬).

So in the Book of Job, we read Scripture specifically detailing the weakness and fragility of a spider web and relating it to the destiny of the godless who lean upon it.  Wouldn’t it be ironic, with twists of humor, if God validated deliverance through the use of it?

The story of the spider web might very well be an urban legend.  Although, many times, legends are built from elemental truths.  Personally, the story speaks volumes to me because I’ve experienced Divine Intervention in a similar way.  If not for God’s mighty hand of protection on a ridge line one night in Nevada, I would not be writing this today.  I can personally testify that when I reached the end of myself and cried, “I can’t!”, God responded with a miraculous “I will!”.  As someone once said, “Faith is seeing the invisible, believing the incredible, and receiving the impossible!”  I certainly agree with that sentiment and annunciate it with a resolute Amen!