Spiders

Rev. Ethan Brown

Pastor and Minister of Care & Discipleship

Spiders—for many people just thinking about the bulbous bodies, hairy legs, and beady eyes are enough to cause an involuntary cringe or an urge to peer nervously into the corners of whatever room they are standing in. For me, the spider itself has never been a problem, but I hate going for a hike and walking through a spider’s web. Each time it happens, I end up swiping at my face and wondering if a spider was sitting in the middle of its web and now is perched on top of my head.

Despite the revulsion they may cause, for a children’s ministry book club, I am reading a book that places spiders, or rather their webs, at the center of our understanding of faith development. So often we talk about constructing faith like constructing a building or a wall. We start from the ground up laying a solid foundation with simple stories or concepts and adding more and more complex ideas about God the higher we go. There is a lot of good in this idea of faith. It is strong and allows us to form great cathedrals of faith within which our spiritual lives can live and shelter. Yet as anyone who has seen cracks in their drywall knows, the integrity of a building is only as good as its foundation. Many people experience earthquakes in their lives—deaths, doubts, disappointments, and delays—that upset the foundations of their faith and the entirety of their belief crumbles around them.

Rather than a building, Meredith Miller, in her book, Woven: Nurturing a Faith that Your Kid Doesn’t Have to Heal From, suggests that we think of faith like a spider’s web. These webs come in all different shapes and sizes, whether it is the iconic spiral, a complex funnel, a net held in the spider’s front legs, or even strands used to glide on the wind. The silk used in spider webs is pound for pound stronger than steel. Yet most critically for faith, these webs are always intended to change and be reformed. They are built off several anchor points that support the rest of the web structure, but any anchor and any section of the web can be deconstructed and reformed without destroying the whole web. Perhaps faith should be like this—supported and held up by key, deeply held anchor beliefs, but always able to grow and transform as we experience a God beyond our full comprehension. How would you describe your faith? What might be your anchor beliefs? Where have you seen your faith transform as you’ve walked with God?