Love Wichita?

On Saturday, April 24th, thousands of volunteers from churches throughout Wichita joined together to demonstrate the love of God by performing acts of service throughout the city. When one considers the magnitude of the effort needed to transform a city, country, or the world, it is very easy to become overwhelmed. In no way can one person or group of people meet the needs. As a result, it becomes easy to believe that any effort to help is pointless, because the needs are so much greater than our ability to meet them.

The vision of Love Wichita, however, is: To seek the peace and prosperity of Wichita, believing that our city will be forever changed, one life at a time. Rather than allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed and immobilized by the need, it is important to realize that we are fully capable of impacting the lives of other individuals, families and groups. And by the process of affecting individuals, we impact our city, our country, and our world.

Remember the story of the 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.

Soon afterward, the man came upon a small child on the beach who was frantically throwing one starfish after another 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 you can't save them all so what does is matter?" argued the man.

Without hesitation, the child picked up another starfish and tossed the starfish back into the water... "It matters to this one," the child explained.

As you go through the coming week, ask the Lord to show you his starfish in need of help.