There is a story about an old man who walks along the beach at low tide picking up the star fish that have been left stranded on the beach. He knows that they will die before the tide returns, so he picks them up and throws them, one at a time, back into the surf so they will live. Someone observing him do this day after day finally speaks to him saying, “Don’t you realize that there are millions and millions of star fish on this and other beaches that wash up each day. What good will it do for you to throw a few hundred back into the water?” The man listens patiently and then stoops down and picks up another one and says, “It made a difference to that one.” As he walks away, he continues to stoop down and pick up one after another and as he throws each one back into the surf, he whispers softly, “It made a difference to that one.”
Sometimes we may think that a task is so big, that the difference we can make is so small, we do not do anything. It is wrong to conclude that just because we cannot do everything, we should do nothing.
Our brothers and sisters in India are a case in point. There are millions and millions of people in India steeped in superstition and ignorance. What possible good can be done in a country so vast with so many different languages? The answer is that something is being done. There are now eight ecclesias in India. There are many more in Africa. There is a small ecclesia in Korea. For each one being baptized, we can rejoice and say, “It made a difference to that one.”
Wherever we are, we are surrounded by human star fish dying for lack of the water of life. We can look at the crowds around us and think, “What possible good can we do?” So we do nothing? It is true that we will never reach all the dying star fish on the shore, nor everyone who does not know the saving Truth as it is in Jesus, but we can each do what we can, with what we have, right where we are.
Isaiah tells us that, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.”
Are we so calloused to the plight of the star fish lying at our feet that we refuse to stoop down and pick it up to save it? Just because there are so many dying, do we ignore the one at our feet? The same thing is true of our friends who are “strangers from the covenants of promise.” According to Paul, they have “no hope and are without God in the world.” Do we care? Do we try to help them? Paul asks us a series of questions. He says, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard: And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”
Who is going to preach to those in India? In Africa? In Korea? In your town and your neighborhood? We remember Isaiah telling us what he hears. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I, Send me!’ “
The Lord told us, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.”
As we all walk along the shore of life, let us sing the words of our hymn which says, “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Behold I freely give, the living water, thirsty one, stoop down, and drink and live.” Let us share our hope with the human star fish we meet. Perhaps we can make a difference with that one, and that one, and that one.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One