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The Boy who saved Starfish

by Joshua Woodmansee

I remember my mom reading a story to me that really made an impression on me.  This is my own retelling of it with a twist.

Once upon a time, there was a boy scurrying along the shore of a beach, picking up starfish that were washed ashore and throwing them back in. A man was walking on the nearby road and saw him picking up starfish. He walked up and said,

“Could I help?”

The boy then said, “Sure, just pick those thousand up and throw them back in the sea.”

Fifteen minutes later, another man was walking on the nearby road and saw the boy and a man picking up starfish. He walked up and said,

“Could I help?”

And the boy said, “Sure, just pick those thousand up and throw them back in the sea.”

This happened ten more times. Now 12 people were picking up starfish. But one man walked on the nearby road and saw the 12 men and the boy picking up starfish and throwing them back in and he walked up and said,

“There’s no point to pick up all these starfish.  There’s thousands.  Just give up and go do something better.”

The boy grabbed a starfish and showed it to the man, and then threw it in the sea and said,

“I just saved a starfish’s life. Doesn’t that count?”

Meaning

The boy is Jesus.  The starfish washed ashore are us, needing to hear God’s Word and needing to be cleansed and forgiven by Jesus. The 12 men that came are Jesus’s disciples to preach about God. They helped save people with Jesus. When the boy said,

“I just saved a starfish’s life. Doesn’t that count?”

He meant, “I just showed a person the way to eternal life.” Doesn’t that count?”

. . .

Lets see, a bible is about $5, so if you even give a $5 donation to UBO, you could show a person the way to eternal life instead of separation from God. WOW!  Should we care about a person’s life in downtown Dallas or half way across the world? Yes. We should. God loves everyone equally all around the world, and when a person is given new life, born again, becomes a Christian, the heavens rejoice and sing praises. Imagine the biggest party on earth. Then, times it by a thousand. That’s how big the party in heaven will be when one person becomes a Christian, from one Bible, from your $5.

This is a guest blog written by our 10-year old son, Joshua, who loves creative writing,

sharing the gospel, and delivering Bibles with Mom and Dad!

It was Friday. On that day we had a huge concert to go to. The concert was in Grand Prairie, TX. We heard that there was a huge storm coming but we didn’t yet know how dangerous it was.  We piled into the car and left for the concert. We stopped at this restaurant called “Firehouse Subs” and their specialty was instead of making plain old subs, they heat their subs. We ended up staying longer than what we were planning to stay and it started to rain.

We got into our car and drove to the concert.  We were five minutes away from the concert when we got stuck at this long intersection. Beep! beep! The radar was beeping at us in the car because of a severe thunderstorm coming straight for us!

Finally, we got through the light, but there was a very long line to get into the parking lot. Beep! Beep! The radar beeped at us again because of a tornado warning off of I-30! We began to panic. Was this going to be a bad experience of my life?

While I covered my face with my jacket, my mom texted her dad who was watching the radar to see how much time we had. We all panicked for the fact that we had only moved about 10 feet in five minutes, and on the radar they’re saying that a severe tornado warning is coming right for Grand Prairie in eight minutes! That means that we only have three minutes!  We looked out the window and saw very dark skies with lots of rain and wind pounding against the windows of our car.

We arrived at the parking lot and saw people in ponchos in the rain taking money for the parking lot!  Is that crazy?  We were planning out how we were going to get into the concert as we sat in our parking space. All I wanted to do was get out of the car and get into the building because for all we know, there may be a tornado touching the ground any second right next to us!  We got out of the car and held jackets overhead and ran to the building as fast as we could. We splashed through puddles and swerved through crowds of people trying to get into the building. We reached the ramp that leads up to the doors of the concert, but the ramp was flooded by 3 ½ inches of water!

We trampled through the “river” and right as we were going to get into the door of the concert, a 100 mile-per-hour gust of wind blew me against the wall!  The door slammed shut and my dad raced to grab open the door.  My mom almost flew away on an umbrella!  The door opened and people rushed inside.  The gust of wind blew us inside and a person said to my dad “shut the door!”  My dad tugged on the door but it would not budge. For all we know, this might be the end of the world!

As people, sometimes we can be lost in a storm. A spiritual storm. You see, God allows challenges in our lives like diseases, spiritual battles, suffering, mourning over someone’s death, etc. to draw us closer to God.  And so we have to trust God in our suffering.

When we were in that storm we were panicking, and we were worrying about what would happen to us.  Worrying does not help you get through your days, but only Jesus Christ will get you through your days!!!

For in Matthew 6 it is written,  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the flowers of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Today, you could donate money right now to UBO, and help those who are in a spiritual storm. Right now, if you click this button, you can donate money to UBO and we’ll use the money to buy Bibles and give them to the people in spiritual storms right now!

WILL YOU BE THE ONE???

Click the button today!

(This month’s blog is written by UBO’s most faithful and my favorite volunteer, my son, Joshua! He came to me and wanted to guest blog and I never hesitated in saying “Yes!”  Enjoy a child’s perspective, minimally edited!)

Urban Bible Outreach is a ministry that hands out bibles to people who are in need of Jesus Christ, who are suffering and need Jesus’ comfort from His Word.  UBO gives hundreds of bibles to other ministries that need bibles to provide for the homeless or homeless shelters. When you give donations to UBO, we are using it to buy bibles online that ministries may need.  Then when the bibles are delivered to our house we sort, stack, sort, and stack, until we have the bibles organized in our house!

Then we pack them in our car and drive them to places in need.  I sometimes ride along to help!

I do actually help! You just caught me taking a nap on the ride back from a service project!

I help carry the bibles into the buildings that need bibles. and I like going on these trips to see these ministries. I feel bad that some of these places I go have suffering people that need God.  It gives me a bigger purpose to help these suffering people with these bibles.

We give some of these bibles to

• People that are homeless
• Homeless shelters in need of bibles
• Pregnancy Centers
• People struggling with addiction
• Kids that are hurting
• and more!

If you donate your money RIGHT now, you can be saving people by giving bibles to them. A simple $25 donation is enough to buy bibles to save people’s souls in Christ.  Please Donate!

Joshua

It was a humid, Wednesday morning.  I sat at the table outside Starbucks with my 11:00 a.m. appointment, a young missionary to South Dallas’ homeless and despondent.  Like all the others I have had the pleasure of meeting thus far in the ministry, I saw that she was on fire for the Lord with a clear calling and a compassionate heart for the despairing and spiritually lost.  We read from our Bibles, out in the open, never having to hush our voices. We openly discussed how to connect those with plenty who want to help and those with little and an ear to hear.  We openly talked of how awesome and merciful and gracious God is. . .

. . .and then two policemen pulled up to the curb seven feet away from us.

My immediate thought, which also became my praise, was “Thank you, Lord, that they aren’t here for us for reading our Bibles.  Thank you that we don’t have to take our conversation and our praise into underground churches.”

Three days later I went to the conference of a ministry called Voice of the Martyrs, hearing story after story of those imprisoned, tortured, and all too often killed for reading their Bible, worshipping Jesus, and refusing to renounce their Creator and Savior, their Giver of grace, their Deliverer.

Can you imagine?  I cannot either.  But as I read about the commitments of those in underground churches, of those imprisoned, desperate for the Lord and for His truth, when all they want is not freedom or a day without torture, but their Bible, I am saddened.  Not only does my heart break for them and what they have endured for something that is perfectly legal here in the United States, but my heart breaks that I stray time and again from my first love.  I want to be completely content with Jesus even if I had no one else or was in solitary confinement 24 hours a day.  I want to be completely committed to getting the gospel out regardless of the cost to my health, body or very life.  I want to be completely hungering for God’s Word more than any food, comfort or anything else I might fill up my free time with, including ministry (Luke 10:27).  I want to live the passion of the underground church even here in America and in my home.

Is it possible to live that passionately about Jesus, the Great Commission and God’s Word without that persecution?  Do you?

An interesting note:  Although Urban Bible Outreach welcomes and utilizes gently used Bibles all the time, the majority of our ministry consists of new Bibles.  We find that for those on the streets, on the run from abusive situations, or living in squalor, just the very act of giving them something new is a treasure in and of itself.  Imagine the double blessing when they realize just what a treasure their new Bible truly is!  But because we do not want any Bible to go to waste whatsoever, unless the Bible you donate is literally falling apart in our hands and cannot be repaired, we utilize it.  For those Bibles that are tattered and torn, but yet able to be repaired somewhat, we send to persecuted brothers and sisters in these hostile and restricted nations through Voice of the Martyrs.  What a blessing this partnership is, to know that every usable Bible is being offered for good somewhere in the world, if not in our own cities!

Watch videos of our persecuted brothers and sisters (and children) in Christ here.

Click here to view a prayer map for those Christians in hostile territories, and please remember to pray most of all.