Years ago I belonged to the Tennessee chapter of the National Speakers Association. The chapter doesn’t exist anymore and I never joined the national organization, but I’ve stayed in touch with a number of friends who make their living speaking.
One of them once told me—completely tongue in cheek, of course—that if you tell the starfish story from the stage, they revoke your membership in the NSA.
I understand. Some stories get told so often, we might as well number them for efficiency. Good old number 42!
Part of the problem with the starfish story is that it has been told so many times, many audiences have heard it already and quit listening when the speaker starts to tell it. But there’s another reason. Speakers eventually learn that borrowed stories almost never carry the same weight as stories you’ve actually lived. Your own experiences have a way of connecting that somebody else’s story usually can’t.
Still, every now and then an old story contains a truth we keep needing to hear. Honestly, I think we live in one of those times.
If you’ve never heard it, here’s a really short version. (If you have heard it, stay tuned, there’s more.) A man is walking along a beach covered with thousands of stranded starfish. He sees another person picking them up one at a time and tossing them back into the ocean.
The first man says, “There are thousands of them. You can’t possibly make a difference.”
The other person bends down, picks up one more starfish, throws it into the water, and says, “Made a difference to that one.”
Simple. Maybe even a little sentimental.
But here’s the thing. Stories usually become clichés when people stop listening to them, not because they stop being true.
So instead of leaving that story stranded on the beach, let me tell you about someone whose name I never learned.
When our daughter, Hannah, was an infant, we knew something was terribly wrong, although we didn’t yet know what it was. Instead of gaining weight, she was actually losing it. Eventually we learned she had an extraordinarily rare chromosomal disorder, but at the time all we knew was that she desperately needed expensive specialized nutritional supplements just to survive.
The problem was that our insurance wasn’t going to cover them. Or at least that’s what it looked like.
It would have been very easy for the caseworker on the other end of the phone to say, “I’m sorry. That’s not covered.” She would have been technically correct.
Instead, she went looking for another answer. She worked with an independent pharmacy we’d never used before. She made phone calls we never knew about. She threaded a way through regulations that, from our perspective, looked impossible to navigate.
Because one person decided not to stop at “no,” our daughter received what she needed. That woman probably went home at the end of her shift thinking she’d simply done her job. I don’t even know her name.
But I know this: She changed our lives.
I’ve often thought how easy it would have been for her to become discouraged. Imagine seeing need after need, day after day, while working inside a complicated healthcare system that often feels broken. It would have been understandable if she’d started believing, “I’m just one employee. I can’t fix this.”
And she was right. She couldn’t fix the whole system.
But she could help one frightened family. She could help one little girl.
And because she did, she made a difference that still echoes through our lives all these years later.
I wonder if that’s one of the enemy’s favorite lies—that unless we can solve everything, what we do doesn’t matter. If we can’t end poverty, why bother helping one family? If we can’t heal every lonely person, why call one friend? If we can’t fix the whole church, why encourage one volunteer? If we can’t change the world, why do anything at all?
Maybe because that’s never been how God usually works.
When Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God, he often described things that seemed almost laughably small. A mustard seed. A little yeast worked into dough. A cup of cold water given in his name.
Tiny things. Ordinary things. Things that almost anyone could do.
And somehow, in God’s hands, those little acts become part of something much larger than themselves.
I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older that I’m increasingly aware of the things I can’t do anymore. There are limits I didn’t used to have. Energy isn’t quite what it once was. Some opportunities have passed.
Maybe you’ve noticed that too.
But there’s an important difference between I can’t do everything and I can’t do anything.
Those are not the same sentence. One leads to discouragement. The other leaves room for hope.
Maybe today there’s one person you can encourage. One note you can write. One meal you can deliver. One conversation you can have. One act of kindness that nobody else will ever know about.
It may not change the whole world. But it might change someone’s world.
After all, oceans don’t appear all at once. They begin with individual drops of rain that gather into streams, streams that become rivers, and rivers that eventually find the sea.
You aren’t responsible for the whole ocean. Just your drop.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for reminding us that faithfulness is measured less by the size of what we do than by the love with which we do it. Help us notice the person right in front of us today, and give us the courage to offer the drop that you’ve placed in our hands. Amen.
