Starfish

There’s this story of a kid at a beach covered with starfish and a man sees the boy picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the ocean. The man looks across the beach and sees thousands and thousands of starfish and tells the boy that he can’t possibly hope to make a difference. The boy picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean and says, “I made a difference to that one.” The reason I bring this up is that even though Christ made an infinite atonement for billions and billions of God’s children, Christ doesn’t lose sight of the one. And we know that this is the case because of how Christ spent His time on Earth. Christ knew His mission from a very young age, and He could have easily looked at those around Him who were suffering and thought to Himself, well, I’m going to take care of all of these people in a few years when I perform the Atonement. But Christ took the time to physically be with and bless and heal and cleanse those around Him, even though at best He could have helped dozens or hundreds in this way, which is such a vanishingly small number compared to the number of souls He would be with and bless and heal and cleanse when He performed the Atonement. Even though Christ was destined to be the Savior of all mankind from all nations and all centuries, Christ made time to help an infinitesimally small number of people in one tiny country during a couple of decades, even though they would also be covered by the same Atonement as all of God’s other children. We will not get lost in the shuffle. We’re not rounding errors or acceptable losses or write-offs. Christ cares about us as individuals, and can make time for our specific needs and problems. Even though Christ has the power to make a difference to every single starfish on every single beach, it does not make the difference He made to one particular starfish any less meaningful to that particular starfish.