Working hard, or hardly working?

I have less than 50 subscribers and quite a few of them have never opened a single email of mine. It’s easy for me to see this and think, “why am I doing all this work for so few people?” And I’ve had quite a few people, trying to help, tell me “post regularly and consistently and more often and the subscribers will follow.” Well, hardly. I’ve been writing and posting at least once a week for the last year and the fruits of my labor are barely sprouting. Why do I bother?

Let me answer that with a famous, generic story. A man was walking along the beach after the tide receded, which left hundreds and thousands of star fish stuck in the sand, away from the water and about to die. The man bent down, picked one up and threw it in the ocean. Then he picked up another one. And another one. And another one. Over and over. But there were thousands. There was no way he could pick up every single star fish. Eventually a family walked by and a little boy asked his mom, “why is that man throwing those star fish out into the ocean?” And his mom told him, “he’s trying to save them, throwing them back in the water will save them. But it’s sad, there’s no way that he can get to all of them. His efforts won’t make much of a difference, really.” The man over heard them and thought to himself “it makes a world of a difference to this one” as he threw another one into the ocean.

I share this story to tell my “why”. Some people have large audiences. Others quite small. Some people have a dozen kids, others have one. Some pastors preach to a million people in their career, others preach to the same 50 people for ten years straight. Sure, I’d prefer a larger audience. I’d love to engage with more people and hope to make a difference to more people. But helping more people is not the same as making bigger difference. I am currently sharing with just a few, but it makes all the difference to the one person who needs to read my posts right now. And that’s what matters to me.

Additionally, I have a full time job. Just tonight my wife asked me “how many hours have you worked this week?” And I counted and told her, “well, after tomorrow I’ll have worked just under 60”. I’m plenty busy, and this week really got away from me. I’m sharing this now to let you know I’m taking a break from Answering the Call this week, but I’ll be back next week.

Thank you,