The Starfish

After high tide, an old man was walking down the beach.  Every few steps, he reached down, picked up a starfish off the sand, and tossed it back into the ocean.  A little girl, watching him do this again and again, approached the old man and said, “Excuse me, sir, but why are you doing that?  There are thousands of starfish on the beach.  You can’t possibly save them all.”  The old man reached down and picked up a starfish off the sand.  He showed it to the little girl and said, “You’re right.  I can’t save them all, but I can save this one.  In the grand scheme of things, it might not seem like it matters, but it matters to this one.”  And he tossed the starfish into the ocean.

A friend of mine told me that story, trying to convey that small actions can have big consequences to someone’s life.  It might not change the world, but it can change one person.  A few weeks later, another friend of mine was telling us about an old Marine Corps buddy he had that called him out of the blue and started asking for his advice.  When the guy asked his buddy why he was calling him of all people, the soldier said, “Because I could always tell that there was something different about you.  The way you conducted yourself.  The underlying integrity and morals that you had.  I knew that something or someone was working through your life, and I knew that it was something that I wanted too.  So, when I needed advice, you were the first person I thought of.” 

My friend was choked up with emotion.  During his entire 20-something career in the Marine Corps, he had struggled with his faith.  Let’s be honest, it’s not exactly an easy place to be a Christian.  He constantly felt like he had failed God.  And yet, all these years later, here was proof that he had been doing something right.  Without even knowing it, he had touched this fellow soldier’s life.  He had thrown one starfish back into the ocean.

It gets me how people are so focused on the news and what’s going on in different parts of the country or different parts of the world.  We are so focused on “over there” and “somebody needs to do something about that,” that we miss the things right in front of us.  God doesn’t need us to change the world.  He has put people all over to handle the issues of the world.  But what He does want is for us to handle the issues that he has put us around.  There are people struggling right here.  There are people needing right here.  There are people to love right here.  We miss them, because we are looking over them at the people over there.  And it’s even worse when someone says that they won’t do anything because it won’t matter.  Well, we should learn from the starfish.  It will matter to that one.