More On The Spiderweb

Comments to the spiderweb analogy:

Reader #1:  “What a lovely metaphor - I like it!  I don't know if this fits, but from a different perspective: the web gives life (to the spider), and also represents the interconnected of all things - the cycle of life and death (the spider needs the web to survive - and the flies and other things that get caught in it are part of that.”

Reader #2:  “Wow,  This is really awesome!  It is such a good comparison.  I believe that many of us have been connected and unconnected from God's web at times in our lives.”

35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8)

Our family entomologist, reader #1, gives the perfect biblical metaphor for the truth that Paul writes about in Roman 8: ....nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God. 

Yesterday God was the spider -- the master builder of the journey call life.  The one who connects all of his creation together with him.  God was also the web that draws people into his way of living.

It is a picture, of the interconnectedness, of the original design for God’s plan, on how we were created to exist in the world.  It is a perfect image of the path of life.  All moving out from the center.  Like the spider, we all need the web to survive.   And God needs us for the truth of his love to survive in this crazy world.

What I particularly like about Claudio’s -- the family entomologist -- description is that the flies, and other creatures, get “caught” in the web of life and “are part of it.”  

That is how it happened centuries ago when Jesus came to correct the Israelites exclusive attitudes about outsiders -- the so called “unclean” of the world.  He came to bring them all together in God’s web.  

To build on that,  people -- creatures of all kinds -- get caught by the attraction to God’s love expressed and lived out in the world by all his children. 

The unfortunate thing is that often what others see — observe — in God’s people is not always love.  Rather,  they see and hear a lot of judgment, and rules, and fingers pointing.  Finger pointing at “sinners.”  That is, those who don’t ‘believe the way they “should,”  according to the finger pointers way of thinking.  

Those creatures hide the wonderful web of life,  They throw a shadow of over it.   A dark shadow that clouds the delicate formation designed by the master builder. 

When that happens it is more important than ever, for those caught in the web, to live more connected to the precious truth of God’s gracious love and forgiveness.   By living that truth out-loud, in gracious and loving ways, everyday through their actions and ways of speaking.

  

To be clear, it is a tough position to be caught in at times..  But the master builder shows us how to live with his ever persistent manner of building .  Ever so slowly and surely binding all things together, patiently waiting at the center for the cycles of life to unfold.  Holding tight to all those who get caught in the fold of his gracious web.