It’s been a slow Tuesday morning and not a particularly glorious one at that. Rather, it’s one of those mundane and disappointing mornings where plans fade away, leaving unwelcome empty time. Trying to redeem the time, I sat at my desk to fill the empty silence with reading, thinking, and background music. In reality, it was God who was redeeming the time, and He appointed a spider to help do it…
11:00 a.m. From my desk, I have a lovely view of God’s creation. Every now and then, my Pandora station drifts in and out of my consciousness. And I look outside and wonder. What is it about morning sunlight that makes it more beautiful than the softest glow from a lamp? It filters down through pine branches, making shadows dance on the ground. As the day gets warmer and the light gets stronger, it will heat the pine needles on the grass, sending a lovely fragrance through the breeze. A big black crow lands in front of me, making me start. He pecks the ground then flies away. Just then a light brown spider begins creeping delicately across a web on my window. The sun highlights her small, intricate body, changing her color to a bright, transparent gold. What is it about sunlight that makes even a spider seem beautiful? Her tiny legs move gracefully as she continues her climb, dwarfed by the giant pine trees in the background. In the great scheme of the created world, she is not a great contributor, she is not large enough to be noticed. If she wanders into a house and is spotted, she will probably be crushed without a second thought. Yet, she was not hastily thrown together. The smallness and intricacy of her design would challenge the most talented human hands. But, what’s more, she was made by the same One that spread the skies and hung the sun that is now illuminating her little body. “Oh how He loves us/how He loves us” comes wafting into my thoughts from my computer speakers. I’m still watching the little spider when a thought interrupts the song, demanding attention, but in the gentlest way possible, “Do you think you were made with any less care? Or do you think any of your days were not crafted with the attention given to a spider’s legs? If such care was given to a spider, how will not more care be given to you, one whom He loves?”
O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
-Psalm 139:1-18
Thank God for His Word that speaks truth into mundane mornings.
thoughts and songs 