One At A Time

Look what I have with me this morning. A starfish! At one time, this starfish was alive and swimming in the ocean. You probably know what happened. As so often happens, this starfish was washed up on the beach and because a starfish can't live out of water, it died.

I heard a story about a man who was vacationing in Mexico. One day he was walking along a deserted beach when he saw a man approaching from the opposite direction. As he watched the man, he saw that the man kept bending down, picking something up and throwing it into the water. As he got closer, he could see that the man was picking up starfish that had washed up onto the beach and he was throwing them back into the water.

As the two men met, he said, "Good morning. I was wondering what you are doing."

"Why, I am throwing these starfish back into the ocean, because if I don't, they will die."

"I understand, but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach and you can't possibly get all of them. Besides, there are hundreds of miles of beaches along this coast and the same thing is happening on every one of those beaches. Can't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?"

The man bent down and picked up another starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He smiled at the man and said, "I made a difference to that one, didn't I?"

All over the world there are people who are like a fish out of water. They are dying because they don't know about Jesus. Can we make a difference? You bet we can! Maybe we can't get to all of them, but we can tell those that we meet each day about the love of Jesus. Each time that we tell someone about Jesus, we can say, "I made a difference to that one."

Dear Lord, help us to make a difference in the lives of the people we meet by sharing the love of Jesus with them.