A lovely lady recently came calling in our backyard and made herself at home suspended between the screen room and a holly bush. Her web is a work of art, perfectly woven for maximum effectiveness in trapping insects for dinner. She can spin her web in about an hour and often eats it late in the day, rest a bit, and weave another. She never ceases to amaze me.

Her artistry begins by lofting a silken thread upon the breeze and waiting for it to attach to an object perhaps two feet away. She travels to the center of the first strand and releases another, creating a “Y” shape. She continues in this manner, using non-sticky material, until she has built a wheel, of sorts, consisting of spokes attached to an outer frame. Finally, she weaves sticky strands between her spiral strands. Her task complete, she waits on a zipper-like structure near the center of the web for a tasty morsel to wander by and fall into her trap.

My yellow garden spider is a member of a very large family of arachnids known as orb-weavers. The name is derived from the circular shape which they are equipped to weave by the addition of a third claw on each foot. Other spiders have only two. You’ll note I’m referring to my guest as a lady and that’s because the female always spins the web and once she establishes her territory she’s typically there to stay for the season. She’s also a pretty docile spider and though she uses her venom to disable smaller insects, she will only bite a person if threatened. The bite resembles that of a bee sting. She’s quite tolerant of observers and so she makes a good subject for study.

Her instincts have enabled the yellow garden spider to weave an environment that will house her babies, trap their food, and rid our yard of a tidy number of annoying or harmful insects. A fun fact about yellow garden spiders is that the much smaller male attracts the female by plucking the strings of her web. I’m not sure he creates much of a song but the movement may very well be music to her ears.

Watching her work caused me to ponder whether the first human to take two strands of some natural material in hand with thoughts of weaving it together into something useful ever spent time observing the work of an orb-weaver.

The skill of weaving has been an integral element of human survival which later translated to artistry and it began many thousands of years ago. In fact, it is believed to be the oldest craft employed by humans. Early materials were readily at hand and much more coarse than later weavings, but they provided shelter in the form of woven branches and twigs. Baskets for storing and transporting all kinds of goods were constructed from reeds. Even ship’s sails were woven of natural materials. Somewhere along the line, women in Far Eastern countries began weaving silk and flax into beautiful fabrics. Ship owners transported finished goods and raw materials from port to port, country to country, making access much easier. Women everywhere were becoming proficient at creating not only essential wares for their homes but also beautiful fabrics for clothing. And make no mistake, just as with our orb-weaver, the art of weaving was a woman’s world. In fact, her skills at weaving brought credibility as a potential wife in those societies where arranged marriages were the norm.

Around the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the Industrial Revolution birthed along the riverbanks of our New England states, changed the rules a bit. Mechanization brought greater risks to workers in the weaving trade and men assumed the labor of the more complicated and often dangerous machines. Massive textile mills remained there for several decades before relocating to the south where raw material, namely cotton, was plentiful. In more remote parts of our country, women continued to supply their homes with hand-woven materials and offered their skills to others as a source of income.

The skill of weaving has been a part of human culture, from primitive to modern. Still today, enthusiasts weave on wooden looms, both simple and extremely complicated, creating objects for everyday use and special places of honor. From survival to artistry, weaving has been a central theme to our existence.

How did it all begin? Well, maybe with one single orb-weaving spider. But wait….someone had to create her as well. Someone had to place all the necessary materials in just the right places at just the right times. Humans had to be given the mental skills and physical abilities to

collect those materials and reason through the process. Someone has to possess the ability to weave all the necessary pieces of life’s tapestry into place according to a pre-ordained rhythm.

How can I watch that beautiful lady resting on her intricate web alongside our sunroom and not know that God is in his heaven and that He has everything under control?

God, the master weaver. He stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the velvet strings, the pains with pleasures. Nothing escapes his reach. Every king, despot, weather pattern, and molecule are at his command. He passes the shuttle back and forth across the generations, and as he does a design emerges. Max Lucado   

(Information regarding the orb-weavers can be found on the websites of the Missouri Department of Conservation and the National Wildlife Federation.)