One day last week, I spotted what seemed to me a large and intimidating spider suspended just below eye level on our back deck. Its huge web was spun from the eave down to the back of a wicker sofa then to the facing of the door into our sunroom, completing a sticky triangle that effectively blocked passage. Without much thought, I went to the closet to get a broom so I could sweep it all away.
I called out to Martha, who was sitting in the living room reading a book. “Do you want to see a big spider and its impressive web before I get rid of it?” She came to the kitchen window and peered out. “Wow,” she said. And then, after a pause, “She worked hard all day.”
Those words turned the broom in my hand into a weapon of mass destruction. “So you think I should leave her alone?” I asked. (Notice she was now personalized.) “Your choice,” Martha said, walking away from the window and back to the living room. When she sat down again, she called out, “Why don’t you find out what kind of spider it is?”
Such a reprieve seemed only fair. So I leaned the broom against the sunroom door and found my laptop. I searched “types of spiders” and scrolled through the images. I found a picture that seemed to match the creature I was eyeing with some trepidation, and then clicked the link to the website where it was identified. The fearful arachnid blocking passage from the sunroom to the deck turned out to be a “garden spider” whose bite was “unpleasant but harmless to humans.”
I closed the laptop, picked up the broom and went to the living room. I reported my finding to Martha and said, “I can’t very well destroy Charlotte. I guess I’ll leave her there as part of the protected wildlife in our backyard.” She looked up from her book, her face beaming with a triumphant grin.
Charlotte and her magnificent web have remained in place for a week. Most of the time, she waits patiently at the center. Once in a while, I see her crawling outward to consume some tiny prey. Only once was disaster barely diverted. I went out on the deck from the sliding door off the dining room to sweep leaves, forgetting all about the web. I slammed into it, but immediately stepped back yelling, “Oh, no – sorry, sorry!” I turned to see Charlotte scurrying up toward the eave for safety. Her spun creation, however, proved strong enough to withstand the force of my carelessness.
In times of urgency such as these we are living though currently, it might seem a trifling irrelevance to contemplate a garden spider. But in truth, it is always important to be reminded that GOD CARES about everything in creation. God cares about garden spiders. God cares about the little wrens and sparrows that roost in the birdhouse near our vegetable garden. God even cares about the nearly imperceptible insects caught in Charlotte’s web. When I contemplate how God cares about all these things, I remember how much more God cares about every human being, including me. This essential truth must never be lost, no matter how busy I may be in my work as a pastor and teacher, no matter how committed any of us are to the work of healing social ills and advocating for peace and justice.
And so it was that God’s Messiah, who challenged the religious and political authorities of his day and spawned a revolutionary faith, did not consider it a waste of time to “consider the lilies of the field” and “look at the birds of the air.” To the contrary, it was always a priority for Jesus’ disciples to be mindful of all of life, even its tiniest manifestations, and remember that GOD CARES about every creature. And if God splendorously clothes the grass of field that neither toils nor spins, how much more will God give us what we need? Indeed, how much more does God care even for those we count as our enemies?
The knowledge – not the intellectual ascent, but the deep and intimate knowledge – that GOD CARES, is no mere diversion from more important matters. It is at the heart of all we do in God’s service.
©2017 by J. Mark Lawson
I have a policy of not killing spiders I find in my living spaces, and, after many years, I have yet to be harmed by a spider. In other words, relatively few of them are likely to bite us -- they mostly want to get away from us -- and even fewer can actually do us any harm.
and thank you for talking about God's care for his creation.
Posted by: Danusha Goska | 09/27/2017 at 11:06 AM