While on business in New York City, I walked past a construction site. Something caught my eye. Glancing down I spotted a small, bright flower growing out of a crack in the concrete.
The visual was stunning and surprising. There, in the middle of the busiest city in the world, something astounding happened. A tiny, tiny seed had achieved the remarkable; it rode the wind, careening through canyons of skyscrapers, finally landing near a building site.
Landing on a hardened side walk, the wind blew the seed which at some point dropped into a small crack. There it lay dormant until it clung tightly and reached a threadbare root down into the smallest gulley of dirt. Over time the seed, now a thin stem, worked its way through the crack in hard, dead concrete until it broke through to the nourishing light of day where the life-giving rays of sun worked its transformational magic, helping a yellow flower grow and remain just out of reach of the shoes and boots that treaded all around it until I came by and was given the gift of observing no small miracle.
Riding the train back to my office, I removed a small sheet of paper from my pocket and scratched out the words: The flower that finds a way to bloom in adversity is rare but gets to cast a unique shadow in the place where the world says it can never be.
It was a lesson for me. A lesson in persistence on persistent faith, an upward call in hard places.