He realizes how fragile his predicament is, there at the end of a very thin line, more than a quarter of a mile below the surface of the Atlantic. The slightest crack in the fused quartz window and the great pressure of that depth would shoot water drops through him like bullets. He writes that the realization the portal was bearing a pressure of 650 lbs per square inch caused him to “breathe a little more gently in front of my window and wipe the glass with a softer touch.”

I had to call upon all my imagination to realize that instant, unthinkably instant, death would result from the least fracture of glass or collapse of metal. There was no possible chance of being drowned, for the first few drops would have shot through flesh and bone like steel bullets. William Beebe, from Adventuring with Beebe, p.81.

 

I’ve been reading a collection of nature writing by William Beebe, who, at the beginning of the last century documented many of the remaining unexplored habitats on the planet. He pioneered the use of the bathysphere, and in the quote above describes a thought that occurred to him at the ocean depth of 1426 feet, then a record. He realizes how fragile his predicament is, there at the end of a very thin line, more than a quarter of a mile below the surface of the Atlantic. The slightest crack in the fused quartz window and the great pressure of that depth would shoot water drops through him like bullets. He writes that the realization the portal was bearing a pressure of 650 lbs per square inch caused him to “breathe a little more gently in front of my window and wipe the glass with a softer touch.”

Curiously, he was reminded of the fragility of his own life by observing the resilience of another. Out his window he saw a jelly fish swim by. Held in the hand, above the surface of the water, a jellyfish is what its name says it is – jelly. But here, at this depth it survives pressures that would easily crush a human. This is the paradox life presents. Life is resilient and life is fragile. Life is God’s creation, God’s gift – and so life finds a way. The world in which humans and jelly fish live is the world humans have been mismanaging for millennia, a world affected by the death humans introduced – and so life is fragile.

One doesn’t have to be dangling at the end of line at the bottom of Mariana’s Trench to know life is fragile. The morning paper, the evening news, or a trip to the emergency room of any hospital would suffice. Each of those sources daily provides reminders that life is resilient as well. For every story of a life taken abruptly by a drunk driver there is another of an elderly person or a newborn surviving against unbelievable odds. Life can be fragile. Life can be resilient. Life is uncertain.

Love, however, is certain.

Last week as I was leaving the house to come to work, I was stopped in my tracks by a large garden spider who had constructed her web right across my front steps. It was an architectural marvel, and I hated to break it, but I had to get to work. I removed her to the grassy common area, and broke the web away. Later I found one of the anchor threads on the knee of my pants. It was nearly impossible to remove, and when removed was surprisingly strong. This reminded me of Johnathan Edward’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He concludes with the image of God dangling the sinner over the pit of hell like a spider on the end of a thread. I wondered at that, because Edwards was a great student of the Word, and of spiders, spending hours studying both.

Spider’s web line is not an example of weakness but of strength. God’s feeling for sinners isn’t gleeful and cruel (“What pleasure do I take in the death of the wicked rather than that he should repent and live” Ezekiel 18.23). Love is not fragile; it is the greatest of the three eternal things (I Corinthians 13.13). It is a thread strong, and robust. God’s love defies every challenge. It is the cord that can not be broken.

 

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8.38-39.