As a child I used to love to skip rocks on the water. Since I did not live near water it was not an everyday occurrence. Going to my cousins and taking some time after a day of bailing and stacking hay the refreshment of the lake was a welcome site. Enjoying the water and seeing smooth stones along the shore was something a little boy saw as joy! Picking up the smoothest stone you could find and sending it sailing across the water and seeing how many times it would skip before the wait of the stone would make it’s final splash and sink to the bottom of the lake. 3 skips, 5 or the good ones might make 8 or 10 skips. Another joy was taking a stone on a very calm day and throwing it as far as you could and watching the ripples go out from where the rock hit the water.
This ripple effect is often seen in the words we use. For good or bad the words we use and the way we say things have a ripple effect. From my view one of the main areas where the ripple effect hurst is when things are said that have been assumed. We all make judgements and assumptions on the information that we have. How often has that information been incomplete? That old saying that until you walk a mile in another persons shoes you do not understand what that person does or has gone through. here is where the pause I spoke of a month or so ago comes in and with that the time to give the person the benefit of the doubt.
With the pause we can stop and think that there might be another side to the story. Romans 12:3 helps us with this thought. It says, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Sober judgement is often hard but this is what God calls us to do.
With our sober judgement I would challenge you to think more highly of others and in thinking the best and giving them the benefit of the doubt word of encouragement can come out instead of criticism. Encouragement and understanding that in all things God is working in the lives of others even when we may have doubts. You can control the ripple effect of words by not responding to others when we don’t know the whole story or defending and deferring to find out more about the story to be able to offer a better response. Are you sending out good ripples? Let the stones of life speak!