Last
week I had lunch with my friend David Cobb.
David and I disagree on just about every political issue you can
imagine, and that’s one of the key reasons I treasure his friendship. (Another is that David is a really good guy
with an honorable, Christian heart.)
We
talked about my community work and I told him how overwhelmed I felt, how it
seemed that for every one person I helped I was of no use to hundreds of
others. The conversation turned to education and I reminisced about being a
classroom teacher before No Child Left Behind and standardized testing. Each year at my first teaching assignment, I
rented a van with my own money and took boys in my English class to the karate
dojo where I trained. I took them
through p.t., put them in pads and tossed them around the ring. I broke bricks with my hands and head and talked
to them about being a man, controlling your emotions when you’re attacked, and being
a protector not an aggressor. Afterwards
I bought them McDonald’s and drove them home.
One year I couldn’t get a school bus for a field trip to Alabama State
University so I put my students on a city bus and we went. I told David about a student, now grown,
married, and successful, who recently told me her career path started on one of
those field trips I cobbled together so my kids could see a bigger world.
“I
couldn’t do any of that now,” I lamented.
“No teacher could. They’d be
fired and charged with assault.”
That’s
when David told me the story of the little girl and the starfish.
“You
can’t save everybody,” David said, “but you made a difference at least to that
one young lady.”
I
felt better, and I thanked my friend for the encouragement, but the more I
thought the more I realized that David was wrong.
In
the story, I’m not the little girl. I’m
the starfish.
After all the distracted young men who’d wasted
the opportunity for higher-education at Alabama State University, Dr. C.P. Everett could’ve written me off
after I didn't turn in my final paper on time and failed his class. Instead, he hired me to my first professional
teaching position. Surely there was a
voice in his office or in his head pointing out the futility of wasting his
time, a rational voice that said, “You’re not going to make a difference.” He made
a difference to me.
Scripture
says that satan acts as “the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before
our God day and night” (Revelations 12: 10).
I’m sure the devil points out God’s own observation in Psalm 143.
The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children
of men,
To see if there are any who understand, who seek
God.
They have all turned aside,
They have together become corrupt;
There is none who does good,
No, not one. (verses
2, 3)
Day
and night, the devil points out that we
are a waste of God’s time. But Jesus still
chose to be born into human life and to give His life on the cross to make a
difference in our eternal fate.
And still today, when we are dried of hope and direction, Jesus uses the touch of His Holy Spirit and the hands of His servants (like David and Dr. Everett) to pick us up and toss us into the living waters of His presence and His love.
For
all of that, I am one grateful little starfish.
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry,
and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield,
Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking
Organization (SAYNO); and director of
rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You
can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button
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Support
by check or money order may be mailed to
Miles
Chapel CME Church
P O
Box 132
Fairfield,
Al 35064
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