Last week, I was praying, and I received a visual analogy for sin. Imagine sin as a rock thrown into a body of water. The rock hits the water. The water is displaced, which causes a 360º ripple of water to move away from the spot struck by the rock. The more rocks thrown into the water, the more ripples. At some point, the water becomes pretty turbulent. Imagine the turbulence of every human being tossing rocks into the same body of water.
People ask why bad things happen. Because our actions have an impact on the water. Why does God allow bad things to happen? Because he gave each human the freedom to choose whether or not to throw rocks into the water. Why is there no peace in the world? Because people impacted by the wakes of others’ tend to react by tossing more rocks into the water.
What would it take to live in a world without ripples? Let’s see what Jesus said. “Turn the other cheek,” which means – don’t throw rocks into the water in response to the rocks thrown by others. “Love your neighbors,” which means understanding that your sins impact others, and caring enough to work at avoiding occasions of sin. “Die to self,” which means detaching from worldly things since our desire for such things or our use thereof are often at the heart of our rock throwing.
So, if we want to live in a world without the ripples of sin, we must each learn to curb our behaviors so as not to have an impact on the water. We must learn to rely on grace to help us avoid occasions of sin. While we cannot control the behaviors of others, we can work to control our own. The ripple is often strongest at the point of origin. Therefore, as we decrease the number of ripples we create, we will see some level of decreased turbulence in the water near us.
Let us pray for the reduction of ripples through out the world, and for the grace to avoid all urges to throw rocks into an already turbulent sea.
In Him,
dw
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