Just One
When I was fifteen, I was gifted a plaque that has my favorite poem written on it. To this day it sits on the nightstand next to my bed.
Most days I wake up, live life, and go to bed without ever stopping to read it. But once in a while, always in an opportune moment, the holy spirit prompts me to stop what i’m doing and read it. The Lord gives the best reminders!
The poem is one you’ve probably heard before, it’s called “The Starfish Story:”
“A little boy walks carefully along a crowded beach,
Where starfish by the hundreds lay there within his reach.
They washed up with each wave, far as the eye could see.
And each would surely die if they were not set free.
So one by one he rescued them, then heard a stranger call,
“it won’t make a difference… you cannot save them all.”
But as he tossed another back toward the ocean’s setting sun,
He said with deep compassion “I made a difference to that one!”
As Christ-followers, so many of us aspire to do great things for the Kingdom, to see people’s lives changed through meeting the Father. That’s what the Lord calls us to do!
But sometimes there’s a stranger telling you “it won’t make a difference… you cannot save them all.”
That stranger might be a friend or family member who is trying to be “realistic.” Or that stranger might be the enemy speaking lies about your abilities in Christ.
But even when a stranger tells us that we can’t make a difference, I want us to be like the little boy. I want us to pick up the next starfish and with compassion respond the way he did. I want us to declare that because of the power of the Holy Spirit, “I made a difference to that one!”
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