Spiders and Mushrooms

It's funny how God uses the banal things in life, the things you don't even like to teach you lessons.

After a long day of class and information being poured onto me, I took a walk in the woods behind the residence yesterday. It was so loud! People from the South don't appreciate the noise. Their brains drown out the cicadas as background noise. The birds, the frogs, the bugs are always chirping here. There isn't a moment's rest. When the diurnal animals cease their songs, the nocturnal ones pick up on the same key.

The trees are so fascinating. Photos can't express the beauty of the autumn. The tree in front of my window is changing from the outside in. It looks as if it's been dusted with a blood-red snow. Some trees are yellow. Some are vibrant red. One, my favorite, had leaves all colors of the rainbow, from bright scarlet to deep regal purple.

I looked at the brook, skipping happily over the rocks and listened to its joyful sound for a while. So constant, so honest. There was a spider spinning a web directly over the water between two spindly branches. He kept going in circles, weaving his trap, despite the fact that the speed of the river below him would be equivalent to us trying to rig a net over the Colorado. He kept at it and finally he sat behind a leaf. And waited. So sometimes God calls us to dangerous places. He keeps us safe. But we have to keep doing his work until we've reached the end of our abilities. The rest is up to Him. We wait.

Open fields randomly pop up between the rather tightly-knit trees. A field of grass where no trees grow in the middle of a forest. Strawberry plants grow as a weed here. They're insistent on having a hold in the ground. They viciously take over and cover area like an army sweeping through. In the middle of the field, though, stands one stubborn mushroom, poking its round head above the violence. It's a staunch example of peace and perserverance despite its circumstances. It's as if it was saying, "Hey! Strawberry! You don't have to conquer the world! You have your place, too. And if you stay there, where you're intended to be, you won't get ripped out of the ground."

The forest here feels like the one in The Village. I was constantly looking behind me expecting to find a red-clad beast standing there stalking me. It was a bit cloudy yesterday, so the woods were darker. But isn't that life?

It's funny how amid Christians and constant feeding and encouragement, you can become so discouraged.