The Ripple Effect

By Marilyn McGrath

 

I remember a story from Contagious Joy about a woman who went into the beauty shop to have her hair done. She sat down next to an older woman and struck up a conversation. The older woman was troubled and lonely, so she listened to her story and they spoke together for several minutes. She was called for her haircut, said goodbye and went with the hairdresser. When her hair was done and she was leaving, she noticed that the older woman was gone but that there was a note lying on the seat where she had been sitting. The note read, “Thank you for talking with me today. I pray to God, but today, I needed God with skin on.” This older woman needed someone she could see, touch, see the love and compassion in her eyes and the tilt of her head as she leaned in to listen closely.

 

And isn’t that what Jesus was to us, “God with skin on?” One man whose work on earth has had a critical effect on our faith and on our attitude toward and relationship with God. His work has been carried forward for the past 2,000 years and continues today.

 

Romans 15:5 “May God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had.” Who have you been “God with skin on” for this week?

 

John Burke, in his book Imagine Heaven, recounts the stories of people who have gone through near death experiences from the nearly 1,000 accounts he researched. Here is an excerpt from one: “The being of light knew everything about me. It knew everything I had ever thought, said or done, and it showed me my whole life in a flash... all the cause-and-effect relations in my life, all that was good or negative, all of the effects my life on earth had had on others.”

 

Burke writes that “despite vividly seeing all their deeds, good and evil, and all the relational ripple effects of both, they do not experience a Being who desires to condemn. They experience a compassion coming from this Being of Light.”

 

What we say or do not say, what we do or do not do, what we think or refuse to consider is important.

 

We live and move and have our being in Christ. It is in Christ that we do all these things for the Lord. Brother Lawrence said, “I turn these omelets in their little pans for the love of God.”

 

Dearest Lord,

 

I ask you to do a supernatural work of grace in my heart so that I might love people like you do. Grant me the grace to be patient and kind, not envious or proud, filling me with the water that overflows from your infinite fountain of love. In Jesus’ name, amen.

 

(A prayer from Peter Scazzero)