"He has made everything beautiful in its time"
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Okay, I have to apologize in advance for this one. You're gonna think I'm obsessed on the topic, but I need to share again on spiders. This isn't the first time I've shared a spiritual lesson illustrated by a spider, but God gave me another little glimpse today, and Charlotte was again the tool He used.
While playing in the backyard today, Amazing Boy came upon a spider in the midst of weaving her web, and he called me excitedly. I mean, how often do you get to see a web before it's a finished product? The sun was setting, so it was directly behind the spider from where we were standing, and it lit her up beautifully. We stood there watching while she went round and round. Awesome Girl took a few pictures for you.
Can you see that okay? Isn't it beautiful? There's even some rainbow colors to the web, but that's hard to see in this shot. But you can see Charlotte, and the sun glinting off her web.
She wasn't done yet. She had made the overall structure, and the radii {I love that word. It's fascinating to me that the word "radius" is made plural by doubling the "i".} She was working on the spirals. And as I watched, I thought how lovely and marvelous the whole process is.
And then that thought seemed absurd to me. I realized that if the web were completed, and I noticed it in my backyard, I'd find it a nuisance. I'd even knock it down, if it were in my way. I'd probably feel bad about that, appreciating all Charlotte's work, but I do it anyway. And if I accidentally walked through it? Well, of course I'd do the requisite spaz-out, freaky dance we do when we realize we've trespassed through a web. Yup. I'd think it a nuisance, and I'd wonder (not for the first time) why God created spiders. I know, I know keeping the insect population down... but that's not what I'd be thinking while I did my spaz-out freaky dance.
But this web was beautiful simply because it was incomplete. Or rather, it was beautiful, because she was in the midst of working on it. And it made me think of the work that God does in our lives. Because in that case, it's the opposite. When we're walking through something difficult, when we're in the middle of a trial, that's when we hate it. It's only when it's complete that we can look back on it, at the finished product, and see what God was doing. And often, we find it's beautiful. We appreciate how we've grown, or some circumstance that never would have happened without the trial.
We need to see every chapter that we're in ~ the good and the bad ~ as a masterpiece that He's creating. It is sooo counter-intuitive to appreciate things we don't appreciate, but it can be done. The key is faith. If you believe that the meal you are preparing is going to be delicious when it's done, then you are anticipating it, even while it's still cooking. How about the nine months before a baby is born? Nausea, discomfort, sleeplessness... but accompanied by excitement because we have faith that it's going to be worth it.
Spiders, and webs, were His idea. A miracle of nature that we don't always appreciate. I think maybe there's a miracle or two going on in my life, that I need to appreciate now.
~ "What are these remarkable miracles
that He is performing?" ~
Mark 6:2
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