A month after the September 11 attacks, workers at Ground Zero found a badly damaged Callery pear tree in the rubble. Its roots were snapped and its branches were burned and broken. Most folks would’ve hauled it off with the rest of the debris. Instead, it was pulled out and handed over to the New York City parks department. They nursed it back to health, and in 2010 it was brought back and planted at the 9/11 Memorial. New, smooth limbs grew out of the old gnarled stumps, and you can still see the line between its past and its present. Every spring it blooms with thousands of little white flowers. God specializes in bringing new life out of what everyone else counted as rubble.
In 1956, biologists put a band on a Laysan albatross at Midway Atoll. She was already about five years old. They named her Wisdom. Most birds of her kind live somewhere between 12 and 40 years. In late 2024, Wisdom was spotted with a new partner tending a brand new egg. She was about 74. She’s thought to have raised more than 30 chicks and outlived at least three mates. One biologist said nobody knows of another bird even close to her age, and every year they wait with bated breath for her return. Getting older doesn’t mean God’s done with you. Keep showing up. Keep being faithful. There may be more fruit ahead than you think.
Anthony Robles was born without a right leg. He tried a prosthetic, but at age three he pulled it off and chose crutches instead. At fourteen in Mesa, Arizona, he found wrestling, and by his own account he was the worst wrestler on the team. He kept working. He went 96-0 his last two years of high school and won two state titles. Few colleges gave him a chance, but he went to Arizona State anyway. As a senior in 2011, he went 36-0, won the NCAA championship at 125 pounds, and was named the tournament’s Outstanding Wrestler. Robles proved what he’d been saying all along: life is about what you can do, not what you can’t.
Going into the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, nobody was talking about Billy Mills. The favorite was Australia’s Ron Clarke, the world record holder. With one lap to go, Clarke was leading with Mills right beside him. Then Clarke moved out around a lapped runner and pushed Mills into an outer lane while Gammoudi of Tunisia shot past on the inside. Mills looked done. Instead he found another gear, sprinted past both of them, and won by three meters. Afterward somebody asked Clarke if he’d been worried about Mills. Clarke said, “Concerned about him? I never heard of him.” Mills’s win is often called the greatest upset in Olympic track history. God loves to use the people nobody saw coming.
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Finland’s Lasse Viren was one of the favorites in the 10,000 meters. Then on the 12th lap, he got tangled up with Tunisia’s Mohamad Gammoudi and both men went down on the track. That should’ve been the end of his race. Instead, Viren got up fast, caught the leaders, and took over the pace. He ran his last lap in 56.4 seconds and won the gold medal. His time was a world record. One Olympic historian called it surely the only track world record ever set by somebody who fell during the race. Falling isn’t what defines you. What you do in the next few seconds does.
