Now I have been to Lee County several times over the past few years, once to photograph the courthouse and a couple of times to see a man held in the state prison there.
So I made a mental note to write this man a quick email and tell him I was thinking of him today.
Earlier in my walk I had spent a few minutes thinking about the effect people have on us, even if we have no idea who they are or where they are, even if they are alive or dead, people back through time.
The two lines of thought seemed to come together in my mind, and I used my note to my prison friend to encourage him in his walk there at Lee State Prison.
I suggested that he find another inmate there and befriend him. There are so many in our prisons who are lonely, who have no family that contacts them, or who just do not want to interact with anyone.
"See if you can find someone to help today. You can never tell what a smile and a word might do for him. It could be his time to turn his life around, and a kind word could be just the impetus. Think what that could mean for his family at home. They could be impacted as well, and you never know what young person, son, daughter or just friend might grow up to be, just because of what you did."
Yesterday I sent a card to my granddaughter in college in CA. She and her brother, who is out of college and working in San Francisco, are hard to buy presents for, and so I made a contribution to Compassion International to help in work with children around the world. Sydney had spent last Fall in Argentina, and we had talked about living conditions for young people in some of the areas there.
The card was a Thank You from Compassion for the gift to assist in providing clean water to children and families all over the world.
I thought, "who knows what just some clean water could mean to a child suffering from poverty and poor living conditions. What course might their life take and what could they become? Might they just be a catalyst for a better world, and all from a drink of good water?"
(Sawyer's Christmas gift was a contribution to buy books for a school in Africa, and he got a card, too.)
Things, done in response to a need, not knowing the impact, and perhaps never knowing (at least not in our lifetime). A pebble tossed into a pond, the ripples expanding from the present into the future. The results, up to God.
At the moment in time where we stand right now, we have been recipients of a lot of pebbles tossed into ponds over many years. They did not know us, and we do not know them, but they tossed, and we are the ones that have benefited.
If I pause and take a minute to ponder how many folks have affected my life, my mind is blown away with the shear number of them, Family, friends of family, friends of friends. They did something, made a move, and because of that, I am where I am today. All the way from Adam and Eve, people have made decisions, people have followed a path that led to today.
God gives us the good pebbles..We toss them in our pond. Years later those ripples are still moving and impacting lives.
Three things:
No pebble tossed into a pond fails to make a ripple..
No life is insignificant..
No contact with another life is incidental..
There is a greater story. It goes on after we die, and we can still have a part to play.
Who's in My Pond, or Yours?
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