{"id":957,"date":"2016-05-26T10:59:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T10:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/?p=957"},"modified":"2016-05-26T11:01:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T11:01:32","slug":"blog-may-26th-why-is-there-suffering-in-the-world-part-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/?p=957","title":{"rendered":"Blog May 26th – Why is there suffering in the world? – Part 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"starfish<\/p>\n

Last week I have considered how we should respond to the suffering of others due to, for example hunger, poverty, persecution and imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Of course many will say that there is too much hunger, poverty, persecution and imprisonment in the world for us, as individuals, to make any difference. In response I offer the featured song for today \u201cWe Can\u2019t Set The World on Fire- (but a candle we can light\u201d) together with one of the many versions of the wonderful \u201cStarfish on the Seashore\u201d story.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, there was an old man who\u00a0used to go to the ocean to do his writing.<\/strong> He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning,\u00a0he was walking along the shore after a\u00a0big storm had passed and found the\u00a0vast\u00a0beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.<\/p>\n

Off in the distance,\u00a0the old man\u00a0noticed a small boy approaching.\u00a0 As the boy walked, he paused every so often\u00a0and as he grew closer, the man could see that\u00a0he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea.\u00a0\u00a0The boy came closer still and the man called out,\u00a0\u201cGood morning! \u00a0May I ask what it is that you are doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied \u201cThrowing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can\u2019t return to the sea by themselves,\u201d the youth replied. \u201cWhen the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old man replied, \u201cBut there must be tens of\u00a0thousands of\u00a0starfish on this beach. I\u2019m afraid you won\u2019t really be able to make\u00a0much of a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, \u201cIt made a difference to that one!\u201d<\/p>\n

Adapted from <\/em>The Star Thrower<\/em><\/a>, by Loren Eiseley (1907 \u2013 1977)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Can’t Set The World On Fire – featuring Lucy Stimpson- Maynard from the album “Uplifted” recorded by Bob Ross Last week I have considered how we should respond to the suffering of others due to, for example hunger, poverty, persecution and imprisonment. Of course many will say that there is too much hunger, poverty, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}