An Evangelical Church in the Heart of Thatcham

The star thrower

It seems that storm season is when large numbers of sea creatures get washed up on beaches and then stranded. Storm Arwen produced this along a short stretch of the Murray Firth near Inverness with some starfish.

There have been many adaptations of a story called “The star thrower”. In this narration an old man is used to walking the beach daily seeking inspiration for his writing when he beholds a young boy tossing things into the sea.

As he comes to the boy, he sees that there are thousands of starfish scattered everywhere and, one by one, the small boy is picking them up and hurling them as far as he can back into the ocean.

The old man says to him, “There must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.” The boy bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the sea. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”

Christmas has just passed, and its message of salvation, through embracing the Christ child who would become the Saviour of the world, has gone out again. How do people end up in God’s heaven? Are they somehow washed in in great numbers? No, the truth is that they come in one by one – “each one saves one” is a lot closer to the norm that God uses.

Pastor Hedley

I am the Pastor at Thatcham Evangelical Church in West Berkshire. This is an FIEC (Fellowship of Evangelical Churches) affiliated church.