The Ripple Effect of Love

Sunday 11 July 2021 we went to sleep with news of our province on fire. Looters and rioters going to shopping malls businesses and distribution centers, taking what they wanted and burning the rest of whatever was left.

I’m sure everyone saw on social media and the news the chaos and destruction that were left behind.

Tensions quickly flared up and with shops and businesses closing for an indefinite time, no one knew when normal will return.

Monday I woke up after a sleepless night of gun shots and smoke filling the air from burning businesses. News quickly spread that it is safer to stay at home until peace returned. I think everyone hoped it would last only for a day. Tomorrow everyone will go on to do their own business. Heads down. March forward. Hope for the best. Let no one in. No emotion. Cold shoulders.

Tuesday I decided to bake bread but soon after I started, I received a call. This call I know today was the first step into breaking open a lot of doors for me in different areas.

I was invited to be part of a very small handful of people, who kept guard at the particular centre that day, to enter via the back of a retailer and load up on essentials. While I was in the shop I called couple friends asking what’s urgent for them and I loaded up as fast I could as much as I could praying that the money I had would be enough.

I had 15min to shop. As the cashier rang up my items, I used the time to run back into shelves grabbing food supplies. After paying and getting a discount… go figure, I walked out with enough staples to help supply 8 families to keep them going for another couple of days!

I drove through barricades without being stopped or questioned about the bags of food in my car. Please understand the significance of this. The guards at the barricades had strict instructions to confiscated suspected looted items as ALL shops were closed. They would not have understood that I was able to enter a shop to do purchases or why I was even on the road during the looting.

Since this day I had more opportunities to get in a shop and was able to buy for others when they could not do so themselves. God opened ways for me to be called to the front of a que instead of waiting in the back. I was allowed to fill my trolley with more than the rationed amounts and no one questioning me why I bought more than what was allowed at the time.

Reading this back myself, it does not really sound like something extra ordinary, but if you knew what our province looked like and understood what was happening, you will understand the significance of what God made happen through me.

I was a tool for His Provision

There is so much I can say. So many stories I can tell of how God brought someone across my path who was in need, and I had enough to give them. When the opportunity to buy food came I would have someone call asking for the exact same items I had in the exact quantities I bought. Let me not even start about my tank of petrol that kept increasing instead of decreasing with each delivery I made.

You can absolutely NOT read it and say it was not God moving!

The rest of that week was like the first day. Father opened every opportunity to use me for the provision He prepared. Every possible hindrance was removed. Every person who would not make His plan work had sealed lips.

Through it all God showed me, LOVE.

Love for every stranger coming along my path, every background and social standing. They are all the same. Bought with the same blood and created by the same loving Father.

I kept seeing a drop of water falling in a dam… the ripples it made kept on going and the next drop creating another ripple. This is how I see love.

Every time I show the Love the Father has for me, it becomes the ripple effect of that perfect Love that will permeate every other person it comes into contact with.

Just imagine how many barriers, physical and spiritual, can break down around us if Love is all we needed to show because from Love – peace, acceptance, compassion, understanding and grace will flow.