Every evening, this little spider friend sets to work above my porch swing. His placement is no accident, by the way. He anchors himself near a lamp that draws in the moths, and then, strand by strand, begins to spin. The end result is not just a web, but an intricate work of art.
By morning, invariably, the wind, the night’s storms, or the frantic flailing of insects and moths have left the web in tatters.
So, each night, without fail, the spider begins again.
It reminds me of what St. Benedict once said, “Always, we begin again.” I think of it every time I see him at work. The ruin doesn’t deter him; it simply compels him to begin again.
Isn’t that the invitation for us as well?
To persevere. To carry on. To see the ruin, not as final, but as the foundation for what comes next.
God’s mercy meets us in the torn and broken places of our lives and gives us courage to rise, to start over, to choose His way, even when discouragement presses heavy on our hearts.
When we’re tempted to quit, grace entreats us to begin again.
So, you blew it today? So did I. But that’s not the end of the story. The beauty of grace is that it never runs out and it never wears thin. Every sunrise carries the promise of new mercy and unfailing faithfulness, assuring us that what was rubble yesterday can be redeemed today.
The spider begins again because that is what he was created to do. And we begin again because God refuses to leave us in ruins. His Mender-mediated power transcends the setbacks that stunt our growth and halt our progress.
So we don’t give up. We don’t despair. We don’t throw in the towel.
We get back at it, each and every morning, weaving service and surrender one faithful strand at a time. And should the weight of the day unravel us yet again, we will gather the frayed threads that remain and start anew. The one thing we will not do is quit.
Always, we begin again.
“It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.”
~ 𝐋𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝟑:𝟐𝟐,𝟐𝟑