Tonight I was taking a few minutes to read some of my favorite blogs. One of those blogs belongs to a woman I’ve never met but she has motivated me many times. Her name is Beth Lambdin and she lives in California. She is high up in Creative Memories which is where I first heard about her.
Her blog today was about starfish (she lives in California, remember?) Her family is currently on vacation at Aptos Beach and today she went out for a walk on the beach and saw a bunch of starfish along the shoreline. (She also shared some amazingly beautiful photos so check our her blog if you’d like to see them.) It reminded her of this story. ”An old man walked along a shore littered with thousands of starfish, beached and dying after a storm. A young man was picking them up and flinging them back into the ocean. “Why do you bother?” the old man scoffed. “Surely you cannot expect to save enough to make a difference.” The young man picked up another starfish and sent it spinning back to the water. “I just made a difference to that one”.
So, where is the coincidence, you ask? Well, last year, shortly after arriving in Swaziland, Africa for a mission trip with Children’s Cup, I became overwhelmed with the needs that I was seeing. I told God that I saw so much need but felt so helpless to change anything. I was immediately reminded me of the story of the starfish that Beth had in her blog today. Tonight, I am working on packing to leave in two days for another mission trip to Africa. I’ll share more about that tomorrow but, for now, I have to believe that reading Beth’s blog was more than a coincidence. I believe God wanted to remind me of my reason for going, even if it just makes a difference to one person.