I think spider plants are a wonderful object lesson about forgiveness. Two of them live on the windowsill of my bedroom. One, Addercop, technically belongs to my roommate, but was entrusted to me under the (questionable) premise that I would take good care of it. The other is Shelob, one of Addercop’s offspring. Addercop is pretty big, with leaves of a foot or longer, while Shelob is still pretty puny.

Now, here’s the thing. I’m not really the kind of person that should be in charge of plants. I’m not really the kind of person that should be entrusted with the care of any object smaller than, say, a breadbox. I’m much too ADD. Any object that size or smaller is going to get lost, broken, or neglected sooner or later.

So as you might guess, until this morning, Addercop and Shelob hadn’t been watered in months. They were both drooping limply out of their pots, a dead brown slowly creeping up their leaves from the tips. A lot of leaves on both plants were completely withered away, leaving poor little Shelob pretty close to the end. If they had any motor skills at all, they’d probably act out melodramatic death scenes (“o, I am slain!”) or try to kill me with tiny papercuts for leaving them to starve to death.

But now, a few hours after their first watering of 2005, they’re already up off the mat. Addercop’s pushed his leaves up several inches and Shelob’s still got some green left in him. No matter how long or how often I abandon them, if I give them a little love, they respond. Who woulda thought a plant could be a Christ figure?