I wonder how you get into a swimming pool. Any chance you might be a toe dipper? You stick your big toe in and you go, “Wooooo, that is cold!” And then your ankles, wooo, that’s cold! Then your calves, wooo; your knees, wooo; your things, wooo! It’s miserable!

You know what’s really the best way to do it, don’t you? Cannonball! You take a running start, tuck your knees, hit the pool, and water goes flying everywhere! The ripples go out, hit the side, and come back in. They go back out and they come back in. They go back out and they come back in. If you’re really big, that just keeps happening—and if the sides of that pool weren’t there, they would just keep going and going, long after you made your initial splash.

I think that’s what God had in mind for us. He’s saying, “Trust me—jump! Make a splash with your one and only life, and we can make ripples together. Live your life in such a way that you touch someone else’s life. Then they’ll touch someone’s life, and they’ll touch someone’s life—and long after you’re dead and gone, the ripples will still be going strong.” (excerpted from Making Ripples by Mike Breaux)

Ripples really aren’t about us. We consider the ripple effects we create as if we actually create them. We think about the lives we touch as if we are fully in control of the lives we touch. We decide to serve someone, give to someone, listen to someone, and because we’re the common denominator, we frame what’s going on around what we experience. We see our lives impacting others, creating ripple effects, yet we often neglect to widen the lens and see the ripple effects of which we’re a part are merely a small piece of the countless ripple effects going on around us, throughout the world, and throughout history!

As we widen our perspective, we realize we cannot determine which ripples are coming into our lives and which are emanating from them. Our ripples overlap others’. We can’t begin to assess the amount of ripples or even the directions of ripples because there is movement everywhere. We’re connected to people in ways we can never imagine because of the ways the ripples expand and shift and change. What we thought was something small is part of something much bigger, and what seems huge is tiny in comparison to what’s around us.

We think we create ripples as we “Cannonball” into life, but in reality, we’re not creating the ripples at all. We’re not the source; God is. Yes, our obedience is required to fulfill the purpose he has for us, including ripples, but our disobedience emanates through ripples, too.

We can’t determine the size, direction, and impact of our ripples—sent and received—but we can trust God to know every detail. As we trust him, we know that the splashes we make will be used to ultimately glorify him. He gets the credit. We get to enjoy the brief time in the water otherwise known as our lives.

“That’s the way it goes! One life touches a life, and on and on the ripples go.”        (Mike Breaux)