Ripple Effect

Recently I have been pondering ponds. It's a fascinating event for water watchers anyway. Water watchers really don't need a reason to settle down to a good solitary time of ripple reflection, but recently I have been pondering the impact we have on the pools we have been placed in, and the impact the pool has on us.

This too is not exactly a new reflection. I have given thought to the day I am invited to swim out of this water and into water eternal. It is my wish that when I am no longer in this pool, the ripples left behind will have some lasting impact. I would hate to leave the kind of ripples that sort of fade into other ripples until they just dissolve into nothingness. I want Oswald Chambers ripples. I want to leave behind some insight or vision or thought or even funny story that inspires a generation I will never meet to love God with all of their hearts, souls, minds and strength. Who wouldn't want to leave ripples like this?

The pondering of late though hasn't been how to leave the pool, but how to live in it well. I have been taking on a lot of water recently. I have some big splashers in my pool. Have you ever tiptoed into the pool, the water maybe a little chilly and you are easing your way in? And as you get maybe up to your calves, a big splasher moves your way and begins to unleash a tidal wave of water your way until you are soaked and freezing? Then even after you are completely wet and into the water up to your chin, they continue to float past and cover your head with a little more from time to time? Worse, they dig their feet into the bottom and churn up as much dirt as possible so the water becomes cloudy and then muddy and then loses its clear crispness and becomes sludge. Here's what I want to know: is this illegal? If it is not illegal: can you fill a civil suit over this? Get a restraining order against big splashers? Tell on them to someone in authority, assuming we still have someone in authority?

Let me say freely, I am sure I must have been a big splasher at one point. If you follow the Sound of Music theology - nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something bad - then it only seems logical I must have spent some time soaking others. However, since I am a proud supporter of grace, and believe in unmerited mercy in splash forgiveness, I want you to know I want the deluge stopped.

I have appealed to the the local pool police and they agree the splashing is unfortunate, they wish the splashing would stop, but they seem unable to get it done. They are suffering just as much as I am, there is some muttering about being in sales not in management, but ultimately we stand in the poor together, sighing and petitioning the Keeper of all Water to make our pool perturber stop.

I believe this is why the numbers in the ponds and pools and lakes and other water bodies are decreasing. I have been told this is because we are poor at inviting others to come on in, the water is warm. I am sure we can always get better at this, but I believe where we drop the ball is that once they get into the pond, we do nothing to help them live there well, to encourage them to find deeper waters and to be a good pool mate. What we do in my humble opinion (which is not humble or I would not share it with you) is get some good stuff and add it to the atmosphere and the water and we hope in doing so pond people will be transformed. Because God is a gracious God, strangely enough despite our ineptness, sometimes this works. Only because it also sometimes does not, we are left to deal with the consequences of poorly equipping pond people to learn to live well in the water. Why would any self respecting land dweller want to climb into a pool of splashy, muddy, stirred up water?

I can only say this about my own water observations. When I finally observed 'the water' for the first time from the eyes of it's Creator, I saw beautiful, clear, cold, refreshing, inviting water and not only did I thirst for it, my whole being longed to be submerged into the depths. I didn't want to swim in it, I wanted to be consumed by it. It takes a lot of my time these days to look past the muck that has churned up around me to remember that vision of the pool as it was intended to be. It was easy to invite people into the refreshing and renewing water, to teach them how good it was further up and higher in, to lead them through the paths I had taken to experience such glorious splendor. There are some days now when I find it harder to encourage others to get in, I have seen the sludge and some of it gets on me and it makes me feel nasty and it clogs my lungs.

We aren't powerless here. It doesn't have to be this way. We could choose to be deliberate about how we live in the pool and how we teach others to do so. I have seen the clear water and I am sure if others could see it too, the numbers in the pool would swell. I think if you look it up, you would find that was Scriptural, in a paraphrased kind of way. In a world, according to God, interpreted by me way. I kind of like the way that sounds. In fact, my favorite way.

Would someone toss me a life jacket?