A young man once walked upon the beach. He looked up at the
sky and down at the sand, wondering about his purpose in life. He noticed
hundreds of starfish that had been swept ashore in the recent storm. Knowing
they would die from being out of water, he felt sad, but did not know what to
do.
In the distance, he
saw an older man, bending over and picking something up. The older man then
threw something into the sea. As the younger man approached, he saw that the
older man was picking up the starfish that were scattered on the beach. They
stretched as far as the eye could see, and the young man did not understand.
He called to the older man, “Hey, what are you doing?”
The older man replied, “Returning them to their home in the
sea.”
“But there’s so many of them,” the young man questioned. “Why
bother? You could never get all of them into the sea. What difference could it
make?”
The older man stooped down,
picked one up, and threw as far as he could into the water. He turned to the
young man and said, “It made a difference to that one,” and walked on.
I love this story. I love the picture it paints. While we
cannot do all things, we can do small things with great love. Mother Teresa
said this as well-it was a life motto. I think what she was called to do and
what we are called to do on the World Race are similar.
We cannot change the world-only God can do that. But we can
do small things with great love. This week, that has meant holding stuff for
campers, letting homesick campers snot all over you, washing tons of windows,
doing the dishes and serving each other. While these may not seem like the
things that change lives, they can change us. They change our attitude. We are able to adopt a posture of humility
and the attitude of Christ described in Philippians 2. We can choose love. We
may not be feeding orphans this month or rescuing women from prostitution, but
we are learning to be more like Christ.
Perhaps the starfish mentality is one we all must adopt.
There are 27 million slaves in the world, maybe we will save 10. There are
millions of orphans in Africa, maybe we will meet and love on 50. But maybe one
of those 50 goes on to be the next Brother Andrew, Mother Teresa or Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. You just never know what that starfish will do, and that is why we
must live for Christ, who would leave the 99 to save the 1.
May today be the day we make a difference for that one.
