Ripples

I am looking at myself. I must have been 8 or 9 years old sitting on the bank of a creek. My mother, an artist by trade, painted me sitting there looking at the stick I had just tossed into the water. Surrounded by the beauty of trees, rocks, and hills I watch the ripples extend in all directions. Up and down and side to side the ripples move across that stream. My stick moves quietly down the slowly moving stream, bumping, rolling, and bouncing its way perhaps all the way to the ocean!

That was long ago and far away but still my mind goes back. I still love to toss rocks and sticks into the water.

Like that stick changing the face of the water by its presence, so does everything around us change by our presence. A kind word or a harsh one, an act of generosity or of selfishness changes forever our world rippling across time.

Easter Sunday has just come and gone reminding us of God’s power to change us forever. Jesus’ solitary Life, freeing us from captivity to ourselves, was a tidal wave reaching across all of time changing our lives forever. As you and I are caught by its force we are changed. We in turn change others, who then change others continuing the ripple across time.

Easter Sunday is behind us but its wave crashing across our lives stretches to this day and all our days. That one act of obedience in death forever changed the world, time and eternity cascading across time. Our every action, word, or attitude which springs from a life changed forever by His, ripples across the stream wherever we are.