Be like the plants

Almost anywhere there are sidewalks, you will see plants growing from cracks in them.

A few miles from where I live, there is a rock cliff, several hundred feet high, and several hundred feet wide. Growing out of the face of that cliff is a pine tree.

While riding my bicycle along the highway one day, I saw a cornstalk, perhaps two and a half feet tall, growing from a tiny crack in the pavement.

Plants are persistent. They will try to grow anywhere. They will find any little crack and sink their roots into it. Sometimes they will live long lives, surviving on the tiny bits of nourishment that fall into their crack. Months or years may go by without rain, but as soon as the rain falls, the plants spring back to life. If their best efforts fail, and they are unable to survive, when they die they will leave their bodies in the cracks, to become soil, to nourish the next plant to come along.

We who are working to make the world a better place must be like the plants. We must plant ourselves in every tiny crack. We must be persistent. Even when it looks as though there is no chance of success, we must carry on our work. And if we should fail, know this: like the plant who dies, yet opens the crack and leaves its body for the next plant to grow on, we will have opened the crack for those who follow us; we will have left something behind that will nourish those who follow us. Our work will never be in vain.