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The worst earthquake to hit Haiti in over two centuries has affected over 3 million people and left thousands dead.
Haiti is close to my heart. And my mind has been numb ever since I heard the news, upon returning from a day-long meeting with officials regarding tax-exempt status of my non-profit Foundation.
The work I’m engaged upon has helped 55 little children receive heart surgery over 6 years. But this figure pales in contrast to the gigantic scale and size of the devastation that was wreaked in an instant by a freak of nature halfway across the globe!
As my dazed senses tried to cope with the staggering scale of the devastation, and gain some meaningful perspective on the impact of my own work, a story popped into mind to save my sanity.
It’s the tale of…
“The Single Starfish”
One day an old man was walking along the beach.
It was low tide, and the sand was littered with thousands of stranded starfish that the water had carried in and then left behind. The man began walking very carefully so as not to step on any of the beautiful creatures.
Since the animals still seemed to be alive, he considered picking some of them up and putting them back in the water, where they could resume their lives.
The man knew the starfish would die if left on the beach’s dry sand but he reasoned that he could not possibly help them all, so he chose to do nothing and continued walking.
In a little while, the man came upon a young child on the beach who was frantically picking up one starfish after another and throwing it back into the sea.
The old man stopped and asked the child, “What are you doing?”
“I’m saving the starfish,” the child replied.
“Why waste your time?… There are so many of them. You can’t save them all so what does is matter?” argued the man.
Without hesitation, the child picked up another starfish, tossed it back into the water, and turned back to the man to say…
“It mattered to that one!”
So I will pray for the suffering in Haiti. And do whatever little possible to help. The haunting words of a song that raised $63 million for humanitarian aid in Africa keep playing over and over in my mind…
“There’s a choice we’re making,
We’re saving our own lives!”
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