It happened again this year. I looked out the window of my church office and there she was: a spider, spinning her web, carrying a huge egg sack. She busily spins and spins, getting ready, setting things up, all the while carrying within her a whole new generation of life. She looks so heavy and so light at the same time.
I looked back in my photos and found an image from 2019 of a spider who may just be her great great grandmother. I am pretty sure spiders are not migratory like birds or fish, but they sure are consistent, every year spinning in the same window, every year unleashing hundreds of eggs in the same place, every year waiting for the time to come when it will all be made new again. Charlotte, that wonderful spider character from “Charlotte’s Web” fame called her egg sack her Magnum Opus, her Great Work, and this spider-mother is showing similar artistry.
We now move into Advent, the season of waiting, preparing, with wonder and imagination. It feels like a pregnant time, and as we follow the story of Mary through the season, all the possibilities of a God-filled future rise up within us. The gift-planning, the song-rehearsing, the meal-preparing, the baking, the visit-planning, it is all in service of a Magnum Opus, a Great Work that God does every year and all the time. It is time again to make ready for God to unleash a new wave of love, grace, beauty, peace, healing.
Welcome to Advent.
Will