8/18/17: It makes a difference…

One of my favorite stories ever is the one about the old man and boy on the beach.  The boy is picking up starfish washed up on the shore, and tossing them back into the ocean so that they can continue to live.  The old man comes up to the boy and tells him that the beach is too big and the amount of starfish is too many to make much difference.  The boy picks up another starfish, and right before he tosses it in the ocean he says, “it makes a difference to this one”.

Powerful.

We serve about 100 people every week.  Over the last year and half, we’ve probably served over 500 different individuals.

And there’s thousands of homeless people on the streets of Oakland each night.

We can’t feed them all, we can’t befriend them all, we can’t bring them all to church, etc.

But we can do all of that and more, one at a time, as God gives us the opportunity.

He’s given us that opportunity many times over the last year and half, and the most recent is with Mike*.

Mike wasn’t on the street this past Friday night, and that’s because we picked up Mike on Tuesday night, and took him to detox.  Monday morning, he’ll be checking in to a year-long Christian recovery program!  THANK YOU JESUS!!!

It makes a difference…

*name changed to respect privacy