the spider and the wasp

The wasp is shiny black and fearfully big just inches from my face outside the kitchen window. Suddenly it connects with a few strands of spider web and seems confused that it can't just fly off.

The spider is gray and small, a quarter the size of the wasp, but fast. She speeds from her hiding place and leaps onto the head of the wasp, sinking her fangs into its head.
The wasp shivers violently and whips its stinger back and strikes the spider. In the spasms of the life and death struggle the wasp dislodges from its thready trap and leaps into the air, the spider still fiercely biting its head.

The wasp stings the spider over and over and the two of them bang against the window as the wasp uses its wings to try and escape what has now become part of itself.

Then in a burst of wild energy the wasp careens out of my view, spider and all, both striking and fighting with brutal aggressiveness. The web vibrates like a violin string and goes silent.

"If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other." Galatians 5:15

Somewhere there is a dead wasp in my garden, with a dead spider on top of it. All this is outside my periphery of vision, but I am as certain of the outcome as if I witnessed the end. The two have become one venomous interchange.

I stand by my window and think of how many times I have seen this enacted in life. Spouses stinging spouses. Coworkers biting and devouring coworkers. We watch it on TV - hateful destruction whose end is just beyond our vision. And our government is in the very act of this interplay right now.