What if heaven is all about the ripple effect?

​I have this view about life in heaven. I can't point you to the pages in the bible that fully support it. But neither can anyone point me to the pages that paint a much clearer picture of what our days and nights will be like there. Or even if there will be days and nights. So I tend to roll along with this view of mine.

What I picture is us spending our days watching our lives grow fruit long after our lives have departed the places where the fruit is actually growing. I picture us getting to see with great clarity our lives making a difference in people we never met, in the lives of people who weren't even born the day we moved from earth to heaven.

I think we are all believers at some level in life's ripple effect. The idea that the choices we make and the things we contribute to this world affect others. Well, in heaven, I think we get to see all of our ripples with miraculous clarity. We'll witness the beauty of where our ripples have been; we'll watch with excitement as our ripples carry on like magic, giving birth to the future.

I picture rows of us leaning over a giant heavenly rail peering down into the arena of life. We're sipping iced tea or Coke Zero. Maybe we're snacking on pieces of fancy bread and sipping some fine wine 🤷‍♂️.

There are smiles as people fondly relive interactions with people they've long forgotten. There are mouths wide open as those same people witness how those interactions went on to change lives in life-breathing ways they never previously knew about. There are tears and cheers and high fives as the mysteries that power life's ripples come alive for the very first time.

There is also sadness and emptiness. I see faces of people who can't find their ripples. They are seemingly left out of the high fives. They hear silence instead of cheers. They stare blankly down at the still waters of their lives that somehow never found the heart to ripple. They are the still waters of self-centeredness, waters that surround a self like an island, waters that never gave thought to even the slightest drift toward others.

I wonder if in those faces I see hell. The look of revelation that life was about ripples and not islands.

When I picture heaven that way, I walk out the door today a little more intent on stirring waters, creating ripples - maybe even a few waves. Sure, there is a calmness that comes with still waters. Maybe even a safety.

But what is the cost of calm? What is the true value of playing it safe - or the unknown harm?