Or, in happier, less fatalistic terms....one college campus pro-lifer fights for free speech allowing a crisis pregnancy group to have their number listed in the college medical center where a desperate and scared girl gets the help she needs to not only save her child's life but give them a brighter future knowing that they were chosen and thought of by total strangers before they were born. Then, that child grows up to live a beautiful, quiet life f simple obedience to God and plants the seeds in their neighbor's heart. Their neighbor starts to ask questions, attend church, and raise their own family up in the faith. The neighbor's daughter ends up a nanny who sees the children she nannies more often than the children's atheist parents. Through the daughter's actions the children are convinced that church is amazing and start to bug their parents to go. Eventually the parents give in and go hear the good news...
And the story doesn't end there! Who knows what could happen next? Maybe the little boy the daughter nannied grows up to be president, maybe he becomes an EMT and saves the lives of countless car accident victims (to give a happier ending to the first what if). We never know where the ripples of our actions will go. That's okay. God doesn't expect us to know how He will use our actions in His plan through His power. He simply asks us to trust and obey Him.
Obedience isn't easy. We want to know what's going to happen. We want to know the end of the amazing story that God is writing. But the story is so much bigger than ourselves. Yes, our stories play a part in God's story but our story's part is like that of an extra on a movie set who shows up for a few seconds (only the back of their head) and then is gone from the rest of the movie. If the extra does their role right, no one even knows they're there.
But their ripples? The protagonist uses those ripples in ways so far beyond where any extra should ever have an impact.
That is the beautiful mystery of the King I serve. I am nothing and yet, because of Him, I am worthy. Not on my own merits, but on His merits. Yet He freely gives His worthiness to me. And someday, when the credits role, I'll get to fully realize that worthiness as I see Him face to face and know just how unworthy I truly am. A pebble and a diamond both cast ripples and through His work on the cross, I'm becoming more than just a pebble.