This post is written in response to Chris Donner’s journaling post: RIPPLES. Please check out  her site when you have finished here.

I often think of life like a river or a stream. It has a source. It has an outlet. It has a direction. It has twists, turns, forks and varying currents and it is fluid, which means it is changeable to a degree. Maybe we can’t from our low vantage point change the place the river goes to.We can, however, have an effect on how quickly we arrive at the end. We can determine the state we are in when once we do come to the sea that is eternity. We can also have an effect on the state of the arrival of others who ride the river with us.

I guess the changes we affect on the river of life are the ripples we make. For myself I have spent all my life on one small fork of the river. I was born and raised in the town I now pastor in. My father and my grandfather before me made their own ripples in town business and politics and I for one have swum in the waves they created in this little place.

From them I learned the value of staying, rooting in one place and one more thing. I have learned that the value of our lives is not found just in the ripples we make but in how many other “ripple-makers” we can inspire.

When I reach the sea I imagine my name will be pretty quickly forgotten but maybe others will make ripples in my stead heaping one small change upon another. It won’t change the direction of the river but it will change the people who meander through the little tributary I have lived in.

This thought of making ripple-makers rather than ripples came to me as I considered the people who have swum in the middle of the little ripples I have made. This weekend I will preach at Cornerstone Church in Winchendon. My sister will preach at two churches in Connecticut even as I step into the pulpit at my church. My daughter Amanda will be preaching to our children’s church downstairs at Cornerstone. My daughter Melanie will be preaching to her children’s church in Saugus MA and my son Joe will be making ripples of his own as he preaches to a children’s congregation in Seoul South Korea. Beyond that is our youth pastor Brad Hackett, Rev. Julie Slocum , Rev. Erin Schlaupitz, Rev. Jon Michael Nalette, Garrick Brewer and Lillian Lapoint all ripple-makers who I was privileged to swim alongside for brief periods.

My ripples have caused as many problems as they have solved I suppose but that’s another post for another day . For today I am content to think that perhaps some of my ripples have gone beyond me into the wide world to help others reach the sea that comes after the river. Perhaps I have helped people I have never met to be ready to ride the real waves that come after this little journey we call life.