Matthew, Orphans, and the Starfish Cliché

When I met my adopted son Matthew for the first time, my wife and I were surrounded by other children. We would try to snap a picture of him on our digital camera, but when we looked at the camera screen 4 or 5 other kids would be in the frame. They loved the attention.

Africa has an orphan crisis.

• Some estimates say that there are 53.1 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.
  You would have to add up all the children in Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Norway and Canada to reach that number.
• That’s 12% of all the children in sub-Saharan Africa.
• 30% of these children lost parents to AIDS.
• Every day, 5,760 more children become orphans.
• Every 15 seconds, another child in Africa becomes an AIDS orphan.

Stats like these can be overwhelming. They can cause us to throw up our hands and ask, “Is there really any hope?” The stats can be more discouraging than enabling. They can cause us to shrink back instead of move forward.

When I met Matthew, though, I was reminded of the perhaps clichéd story of the boy and the starfish. You know the one. It goes like this:

A boy was on a beach throwing starfish into the sea. The sun was hot and the starfish were dying because a wave had brought them too far out into the sand. Problem was, there were starfish as far as the eye could see across the dunes. A man came across and shook his head at the boy. “You’re wasting your time kid!” he said. “Can’t you see how many starfish there are? You could throw them back for days and have no impact at all. It would only be a drop in the bucket. You’re not making any difference.” The boy was unperturbed. He picked up another starfish and hurled it into the water. He had a look of satisfaction on his face as he said,

“It made a difference for THAT one.”

And that’s just how I felt when I met Matthew.