Musings

Years ago, my father mentioned that Jonathan Edwards wrote a treatise on spiders when he was 17 years old. He pointed out to me that Puritans often studied creation to observe and marvel at the attributes clearly declared. There truly are many things we can perceive and learn from God’s amazing creation, but I never thought of the spider as such until several weeks ago. We have a book containing addresses to young children by J.C Ryle. One evening, while reading through a sermon on Proverbs 30:24-28 I was convicted and encouraged. Ryle was illustrating how the Proverbs instruct us to learn from four animals that are little and wise. Verse 28 historically reads, “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.” As I began reading to my kids, I thought, “this will be cute and instructive…” We have spiders outside the front window that we watch build their webs, so I hoped that it would actually make some sense to their little brains. Ryle says, “The spider is a poor litt