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Dear church family, I am guest writing Steve’s blog this week because of a crazy schedule with his day job. It has been a while since I have done this so just to review and remind you: when Steve writes the blog you get profound, spiritually inspiring, biblically well-researched concepts to ponder. When I write the blog, you get the ping-ponging, seemingly random musings of an ADHD brain that heavily resonates with songs from Broadway musicals as I try to figure things out. I will still strive to provide brilliant, insightful observations. But, well, you gotta go with what you got. And what I’ve got is disturbed trepidation about the state of the world and the coming holiday season. In searching for something to quell my spiraling anxiety, I was reminded of the story of the beached starfish. You can Google this to make sure that I got all the details correct but here’s a quick summary: An old man on an early morning beach walk discovers thousands of starfish washed ashore by the tide. Farther down the beach, a boy is picking up individual starfish and tossing them into the receding water. When the man meets the boy, they discuss that starfish cannot survive out of the water. The old man admonishes the boy that there are countless starfish, not enough time and “You can’t possibly rescue all of them. What difference is throwing back a few going to make anyway?” Spoiler Alert: The boy bends down, picks up another starfish and throws it into the water saying, “It made a difference to that one!” Then the old man helps the boy rescuing starfish. There are many aspects of this story that we can evaluate – the analogy of the wisdom of age versus the naïve idealism of youth; the laws of diminishing returns versus compounding interest; the lifecycle of the Asterias rubens (common starfish). But I think the most significant point of all this is to take action instead of letting the overwhelming nature of all that is wrong in the world paralyze me into simply giving up. That’s not easy to do, amid bleak headlines. I have to remind myself daily of my resolve to make a difference, however small. Luckily, here’s where the Broadway musicals come in. There’s a line from the show-stopping song, Defying Gravity from Wicked that says “Some things I cannot change. But til I try I’ll never know.” I probably can’t fix everything but I can make a difference for somebody, and that is what I am going to focus on doing. In defiance of skepticism and probably logic, I am going to have faith that “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” Will you join me? Colleen Hart
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