The Ripple Effect by Connie Hunter-Urban

This week as I was walking to our garage, I noticed something that thrilled me—our backyard tomatoes were ripening. What caught my eye was the splash of bright red emanating from a bunch nestled in the midst of a thick growth of cherry tomato vines. I carefully picked the clump and took them inside for us to enjoy, just enough to whet our appetites for more. We reap what we sow, and that is true whether it is our carefully chosen tomato plants or our few haphazard potatoes that are the result of a carelessly thrown spud into a compost pile. When we sow something, we have to live with those results. However, we don’t always consider how our plantings may affect others.
Our choices come with consequences, but our lives aren’t inside a vacuum. Both minor and major choices usually impact someone else. When we choose to waste resources, everyone on the planet is affected. When we don’t paint our house, we change our neighbors’ property values. Not teaching our children respect for authority can affect teachers, classmates, policemen, future spouses, and a multitude of others. When we choose to drive drunk, we will not only impact our families if we lose our licenses but also anyone else we happen to encounter on the road. A selfish decision to pursue our own interests impacts our spouse’s, children’s, grandchildren’s, and friends’ well-beings. Each action comes with a reaction, and that is what we don’t consider with decisions. It’s like ripples that come into the water after a stone is thrown—they keep going on indefinitely.
Many biblical saints discovered that principle also. When Adam and Eve violated God’s commandment and ate the fruit, their family had to leave paradise and all of mankind came under a curse. David’s decision to have Uriah killed so he could have his wife created conflict in his family and a pronouncement “the sword [would] never depart from [his] house” (2 Sam. 12:10): brother raped sister, brother killed brother, son betrayed father. When Solomon chose to ignore God’s command and take heathen wives, his posterity lost their throne. The same principle of consequences is true for godly decisions. Mary obeyed God and birthed the Savior who affected the world for all of time. Paul’s conversion on the Road to Damascus provided us with most of the New Testament. Jesus’ decision to obey his Father’s will and go to the cross negated Adam and Eve’s consequences for mankind. Whether good or bad, our decisions impact not only us, but many more.
What we do for God also has consequences for others. Our job on earth is to be a servant, and Jesus modeled when he planted good deeds geared to helping all with whom he came in contact. Our lives should leave a mark on others in the same way. A former principal tells the story of a surly young man whom he determined to give a kind word each day. Never did the teen respond until he had been graduated for a couple of years and came to see this principal. He told him that throughout his young years, this man had provided the only words of kindness ever directed at him. His home life had been terrible; his quiet brooding had let him fade into the back of a classroom. Though he never demonstrated any reaction to the principal then, each morning he came to school just to have his daily fix of kindness. When we shop or work or drive or talk, are ripples we leave showing love and kindness or more confusion in an already-chaotic life? Are we a solution to another’s problem, or are we just another layer to add onto the despair in which he/she is drowning? Do we demonstrate His love to a world that was so important to the Father He asked His son to be their martyr? Does the wake we leave in life’s sea reflect the face of Jesus?
This month we lost a friend whose life’s ripples touched many others. Carol Neeley went home to be with God. When I think of her, I see one word—tenacity. She was a bulldog about following the Lord. I knew Carol as many others did—a lady who was in love with God, His word, and Holy Spirit’s depth. Her conversations were mostly about God and what He had done for and through her. She stayed in His word and in His presence as much as she could. Her words of knowledge and wisdom often sustained or bolstered me. Many times she would call and say she had been praying and God had given her a prophetic word for me. Her obedience and perception made me respect her throughout the years I have known her.
Her life touched many others also. She understood how what she did rippled into their lives and that she was placed on earth to be a servant to them: her mother, her siblings, her children, her friends, her Christian brothers and sisters, even strangers. She remained true to that call until the very end. Only a short time before she died, she called to tell me of something God had spoken to her. Her excitement overshadowed the illness ravaging her body; for she had long ago learned that in “whatever state [she was in], to be content” (Phil. 4:11). When she was still young, she had given herself to God and considered “the loss of all things…as rubbish” (Phil. 3:8) compared to everything she had gained in Him. She stepped as He led. She gave as He did. She will be missed, but her life’s worth remains in the ripples that still touch our lives. What a legacy for any of us to leave someday: that our actions continue to bless others even after we are at home with Jesus.