Quiet desperation is how the poet Henry David Thoreau described the way most people live their lives. Instead of facing new challenges with an optimistic hope of success, many people would rather give up and hide from the world. I often feel this emptiness of soul right when I wake up in the morning, especially during the dark and cold days of winter. Fear of failure and a gnawing sense of meaningless makes me want to crawl right back into bed, pull the covers over my head, and sleep the next few months away until the snow melts and clovers bloom. When this low-grade anxiety enters the heart, it has a way of sapping courage.

This debilitating pessimism seems especially to affect people who are creatives by temperament: writers, artists, poets, preachers, and those who have the job of trying to persuade and convince others. We can self-talk ourselves out of even trying when this crippling feeling of desperation takes hold, “Why would anyone want to listen to me? Why even try? I’ve got nothing.” It gets especially bad when we convince ourselves that my voice and opinion is woefully inadequate compared to all of those great speakers and writers who came before me, and said it so much better.

C. S. Lewis once said, “The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.” But why write when it seems that no one wants to read? For that matter, as a preacher, I often wonder what is the use of preaching when it seems like very few people actually listen. I once heard a cute little story about a boy and a starfish:

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy hurriedly picking up and gently throwing things into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “Young man, what are you doing?” The boy replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.” The man laughed to himself and said, “Don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and thousands of starfish? You can’t make any difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said,

“I made a difference to that one.”

As a pastor and writer, sometimes communicating messages feels like you are trying to save starfish. And if you only reach a few should a person write, preach, teach, and even try? As the group, Chicago once sang, “Does anybody even care?” Or is it all a big waste of time to exert effort and spend time sharing your heart when most people end up yawning?

It all depends. Do you care about “the one” starfish who does listen? Is that enough to keep you going? “As long as one person is saved I would do such and such a thing,” people often claim. But is that really the case or is it just a feel-good statement? Should effort only count when a large following results from your efforts? Are tiny rural churches on the corner as important as the mega-church in the city? Does the relatively unknown writer from the small town in Michigan have anything good to say like the well-known authors who are kept on retainer by the giant publishing houses?

America’s penchant for marketing and promotion has people believing that if someone is popular that naturally must mean they are right. The bigger the crowd the more credible the messenger. But if the truth is truth, then it does not matter who the bringer of the truth is. All they need to have is the courage, to tell the truth. And the reason is simple, “The truth sets people free.” But there is also another reality, not all people want to hear the truth. And this is where I think the parable of “starfish saving” comes in because I think there are four groups of people out there:

(1) Those who believe they have already arrived at the full truth and don’t think they ever need to listen to new truth. So, they don’t care what you have to say.

(2) Those who are looking for something to support what they already believe, also known as “confirmation bias.” This group only half listens, but it isn’t to learn, only to substantiate what they want to hear.

(3) Those who want to be entertained, so truth plays second fiddle to funny, or there must be some new tidbit of sharable information to nibble on, so they may give you a quick listen. But this kind of listening doesn’t sink in deep, it only washes off the mind like a gentle shower on a Saturday morning as they go looking for the next new and shiny thing.

(4) Those who are hungry. They want to know what is truly true and they will wrestle with ideas, even if they disagree, they just want truth.

So the next question is, what percentage of people are actually hungry? I would say it is a very small amount. Maybe 5% of those online, and hopefully a bit more in the congregation. Is it worth trying if you only reach 5%? Well, like the starfish, if you are really speaking the truth you will set those who are listening free. They are those, as Jesus once said, who have ears, and we need to give them a chance to hear. And for those who have eyes, we need to let them see.

Over the years of saving starfish, I am always surprised by who is actually listening. They usually are people you don’t even consider because they are hiding in the background just observing. They listen and watch, and they don’t like to stand out and be seen. Often, these are the people who are longing for someone courageous enough to come forward and say what they know is true but are too timid to say it themselves. Or they don’t know what is true, but when they hear the truth they are moved and changed by it. Like warm rainwater landing on a parched flower, true truth brings hungry people alive.

It was December 2013 when I first tried my hand at blogging. All I wanted to do was see if my writing had any substance. Going public is the quickest way to know if you have any ability. It is one thing to say, “I like to write,” it is quite another thing for people who don’t know you to say, “I like to read what you write.”

I decided to give my talent a test. At first, I got immediate compliments from friends, church members, and of course, my mom. She always believes in me. But then out of the blue, people who I haven’t heard from for years would private message me and say, “thanks for writing that”, or “I never thought of things like that before.”

But there was one blog post I submitted on a whim. It was a short article that was part of my research for a sermon that I was going to give that Sunday. I didn’t think it was that special, nor did I expect too many people to read it because it was about an obscure subject, the Greek tense of a word. The title of my article was, “Aortist Active Imperative: Verbs of Faith.” Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Hardly. But after I posted it, a number of people really expressed how they were blessed by it. Here is one comment I received after two years of the original post,

“Through this article you have given a gift to many. Thank you for listening to the call to pen these words. Your article was included in my query of aorist imperative, the topic of free will was not on my mind. This is how I know that your article is a gift from God. He knew that I needed to hear these words even when I didn’t. He led me to what I needed, not to what I wanted. Thank you again.”

Wow, someone actually listened to me. A small starfish found some seawater! It gave me the encouragement I needed to keep writing because I realized I was reaching people even if I didn’t always realize it. And I too encourage anyone with a passion for truth — if you think you have to write, you need to write because you never know who is reading, watching, listening, or seeing. There really is power in the small point of a pen. 

Quiet desperation is like fog, it can blur your vision and block out some rays of sunshine, but it has no real substance nor can it stop you from walking through it. Instead of letting it stop you, keep moving through it, keep writing, keep dreaming, and never stop trying. So, get busy, and save some starfish!