The Small Stone Dropped in the Ocean

“Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.”

-St. Gregory Nazianzen

Good evening and welcome to this wonderful journey that we are about to embark on.  To start off we would like you to imagine if you will that you are currently holding a tiny rock in your hand.  What does that rock look like? Is is smooth, does it have sharp edges, is it heavy?  Now take that rock and imagine yourself throwing it into the ocean.  What happens to that rock?  If your rock is anything like the one I am imaging it is probably sinking to the bottom of that ocean as we speak. This rock that I speak of was an idea that was thrown by one of our youth leaders into the sea of High School Youth Ministry.

That idea was to take part in a 30 hour famine by World Vision.   For those who do not know the 30 hour famine is that students fast for 30 hours while raising funds to donate to help feed the hungry of the world.  All most of our students heard was 30 hours with out food.  I can still hear their responses which could be summed up with “30 hours? I can’t even go 30 minutes without a snack.”  Needless to say that the idea did not go over very well.

The issue is that like in the beginning of this blog most of them are focusing on the act of throwing the rock and watching it sink to the depth of the ocean.  The fact that we were fasting for 30 hours was the rock rapidly descending. What we did not look at is the affect that the rock had on the ocean.  That rock started a ripple effect, and that ripple can have a major impact further down the line.  To help the teens realize this we have 5 week lesson plan, each week designed to help us shift focus from denying ourselves of food for 30 hours to help feeding those in need.

Every week we will have updates on our progress.  We will also have teens contributing to this blog as well, so you will be able to see many different view points on this.  Since you did throw the rock earlier might as well join us through this journey and see what kind of waves that a single rock can form.

For those who would like some more information please feel free to check out the World vision website 30 hour famine.  Thank you for your time and please keep the Teens as well as the people who are going hungry in the world in your thoughts and prayers.