One thing you notice about the bridge across the Rhône in Vienne is that it’s pretty much designed to be a spider’s paradise.
Slat space between its steel guardrails provides the perfect void for a spectacular web. (Or two. Or three. Or three dozen.) A quick glance reveals that – while you’re going to town – the local arachnids have already done so … a web has been wedged in practically every 50 centimeters.
And it’s almost like the spiders know they’ve got a good thing going on along this bridge. They don’t slink off to a corner, waiting for an unsuspecting bug to be ensnared. Rather, each seems to take up a position at the very center of the web – as if to say to their insect neighbors, “You can run but you can’t hide. Some day soon, you’ll be mine.”
This memorable bridge brigade became something of a prophetic moment for me when I encountered the passage from Romans we hear proclaimed this week. In it, St. Paul wonders aloud,
“What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?”
What, indeed, can separate us from Christ? Scripture assures us that the Living Word has been seeking to capture our hearts since the beginning of time. Indeed, since before time began. Christ – at the center of all things – longs to be one with us, and we one with Him.
It’s a great mystery, how all that is supposed to come about in our lives. But I suspect St. Paul came to embrace the mystery – at least in part – because he’d come to be disappointed in the things of this world. Rome, for all its might, failed to satisfy him – as did every other principality and power and present thing and future thing.
All these “things of the world” eventually decay. But one thing – one sticky thing – remains: “the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And blessed are we who get caught up in Christ’s web.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
I came across a little prose-poem the other day that explores a similar theme about the nature of God’s love – written by Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor. You might find it worthy of reflection.
Luminous Web
By Barbara Brown Taylor
You are like an exquisite spider web
With transparent dewdrops of dawn.
You sparkle like crystal in our hearts
Joining one wet bead with another.
Every part of the gossamer netting
Connects with You through the web.
Even though we feel apart from You
Or disengaged from one another,
We are the jeweled dewdrops of beauty
Joined as one with You, Luminous Web.
With Us Still 