Make some Ripples

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I was reading about Norman Lear in "People" magazine. They repeated a story from his childhood. Apparently his grandfather told him when he was a child that every pebble he tossed into the lake "raised the water level." Lear, then, threw in a rock, but when he still couldn't see any change, his grandfather said, "All you see is the ripple."

As the article goes, when Lear reflected on this many years later, he concluded, "When you measure how you yourself might have changed the world, 'be satisfied with the ripples.'"

You may not be making a big splash in the world today, but that's okay. Maybe God has given you a "little" way to make a difference. Be satisfied with that. Some of our greatest saints (such as St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta) understood this intimately.

It is in the Little Way or in the ordinary things that we make the world a better place by loving others in extraordinary ways.

Go and do that. Throw some pebbles and see what God can do with your ripples.

Janet Cassidy

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