“If you do something good and small in your corner of the world, you are doing something significant.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – August 15, 2023
Let all that you do be done in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14
According to research by the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), one in ten people has had a near-death experience. They clinically died for a time, their soul left their body, and then they were revived, either by human or divine means.
When Dr. Mary Neal, a spinal surgeon from Wyoming died in a whitewater kayaking accident, her spirit left her body, she felt Jesus holding her, and she experienced indescribable love. 1 Corinthians 15, God’s promise to believers became a reality to her, that when we die, we will leave these earthly tents and go home.
Not unlike millions of others who have died and been revived, God also gave Mary a review of her life and she was shown how her actions and words—and everything she had ever done affected others.
When I consider this and other stories like Mary’s, I think about how God’s priority is love. He cares deeply how people treat one another. It also makes me think about how we are all connected like interlocking circles. My life spills into—and affects—yours, and yours does the same for those you experience. No one is an island. We are never isolated, even if we feel like it. Even in keeping to ourselves, we affect others. Because it’s not only what we do or say that affects those around us, but also what we don’t do. We don’t call, reach out, apologize, or make the effort to love.
We all affect others because we are all like interlocking circles.
It’s easy to understand how we all affect one another when we consider daily interactions. You go to the grocery store. The cashier is rude and makes you angry. You drive fast on the way home and run a red light. Another driver yells out their car window. When you get home, you yell at your mate, then they yell at your child. Everything we do ripples. Both good and bad. And like Mary, perhaps we won’t understand how everything we have done and said has rippled until we go home. Everything ripples: love, kindness, tenderness, gratitude, generosity, gifts, blessings, rudeness, sharp words, shaming, shunning, blaming, and manipulating.
This is why we must avoid thinking we have to do something “big” to make a big impact. You don’t need to be known, famous, or rich. You only need to make good ripples right where we are because what you do and say will pass from someone close to you to the next person, to the next person, and the next person. And on and on it will go.
If you do something good and small in your corner of the world you are doing something very significant.
In Scripture God reveals how He takes even actions that may seem small seriously. For example, he tells us we are to:
Show hospitality to one another (1 Peter 4:9)
Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
Comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18)
Be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10)
Honor one another above yourselves (Romans 12:10)
These commands focus on the things we can do for those closest to us, for those who are in nearby, interlocking circles. If you do something good and small in your corner of the world you are doing something significant and you are making good, good ripples.
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Prayer
Lord, help me to make some good ripples of love today. I may not see how what I do and say ripples on through people, but it does. Help me to love as you say. Amen.
Application
Decide how you will make a “ripple of love” today and do it.
Related Reading
Romans 13:8; John 15:12; 1 John 3:11
Worship Resource
Newsboys: Love One Another
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