Ripples

Dikkon Eberhart


Remember throwing pebbles in the water when you were a child? 

We have four grandchildren living with us now.  The three of them who are six, five, and two are excited to throw pebbles now, and the five-month-old will almost certainly join in with his brother and sisters as soon as he learns how to walk. 

I remember being fascinated by the concentric ripples.  I loved to watch as the ripples spread out across the water’s surface and diminished in size while still continuing with their energy, gradually slackening until they were gone.  But if the ripples reached the shore, they kicked up tiny breakers there, which wetted the sand where it was dry.   

Of course, I was a strong boy, and I loved big rocks, and I wanted to make the biggest splash.  A big splash and big ripples made me feel good.  But here’s a secret. I would not have revealed my secret answer to you if you had asked me, at ten, which I liked better, a big splash or the smaller ripples. 

Honestly, I liked the smaller ripples better.  They had subtlety.  You could see how their effect impacted the water for a long, long time. 
 
 

I’m thinking about ripples right now because of a Facebook post I read a few days ago. 

A woman friend of mine received a message from someone out of the blue.  With her permission, I reproduce it here verbatim (names have been removed). 
 
I'm not sure you remember me. I met you 20 years ago outside of Women Services on Main St in Buffalo I was only 15yrs old. You saved my sons life ❤ I was alone, there to start a two day procedure. Day one of the would be termination they instructed me to wait at home come back the next day and have it completed. However, that night I felt my son move. The next day on my way into the building I met you. If I'm not mistaken I believe you read me some scriptures and made me aware of other options. So I decided to have the laminaria removed and continue with the pregnancy. That day you took me home and you never left my side, took me to your church, linked me to several agencies. You were truly a blessing to me. Today my son (name removed) is almost 20yrs old away at (name removed) College beginning his sophomore year. I miss him so much he's the best thing that ever happened to me. When I think of him I often think of you. I often wonder how many other women you have been a blessing to. You have always held a place in my heart. Peace, love and blessings always ❤
 

 
What a delight this was to read!

How mightily the Lord has blessed the woman who wrote to my friend, and her son.



My friend was the Lord’s pebble. 

The Lord splashed my friend down in Buffalo.  Ripples began.  My friend spoke to a fifteen-year-old.  The fifteen-year-old was preparing to abort her son on the morrow.  That night, a ripple passed through her womb, and she felt her son move.  The next day, another ripple brought my friend to the Women’s Services building, again, with a Scripture.  And so the ripples continued to widen. 

My friend had made a friend for life…for LIFE. 

She had made a friend for her own life, of course (which fact remained unknown to her), but most importantly for the life of that fifteen-year-old mother and her son. 
 
 

And yet the ripples from that single splash continued to widen.  Twenty years passed.  Twenty years!  Perhaps during those twenty years the writer of this message has told other people how that ripple of the Lord broke against her dry sand and wet her parched soul.  Wet her and refreshed her enough that the ripple reached her womb and floated her son inside her, so she felt and thereby knew him. 
 


And more to this. 

When I read this message, it had been public for two days.  In that amount of time, 874 likes had occurred, and 143 comments had been written, not a single one of which deplored that the Lord had dropped a pebble. 

May the Lord be praised for dropping that single pebble He dropped twenty years ago.  
 


And last.

The Lord keeps right on dropping His pebbles.  His will be done. 

Faced as we are today by a secular culture that preaches the rightness of aborting babies, many of us Christians feel stymied and afraid. 

​But twenty years ago, a friend whom I did not yet know, spoke in a timely way to a fifteen-year-old girl, which caused the love of the Lord to flow into her and to stop her in the very act of killing her son, and for at least those three persons—and twenty years later, for 874 others--the world changed. 
 
 
 

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