I read a story the other day. In it a man shared about buying some land, much overgrown from years of neglect. He was in his field clearing brush and found beneath it, the remnants of a long forgotten barbed wire fence. And there an acorn had fallen and a tiny oak sapling has risen, or tried to. It was spindly from lack of light and had become embedded and bent in the barbed wire as it grew. He carefully cut the wire away and replanted it in another place, with better soil, better light and more room, and now time will tell if it becomes a mighty oak.

What struck me upon reading was the resilience and insistence of life. The poor conditions had not been able to stop that force, but had caused it to grow into something that was not quite what it was meant to be, and yet it grew.

That is not so different from our lives, and how conditions beyond our control can alter us so that we are not quite what we are meant to be. Dry and withered from lack of water, or yellow and rotting from too much, weak and spindly from always having to stretch to reach the light, or forever marked by the barbs that have become a part of us. And yet, we grow.

I thought of all the people I see in a day, including the one in the mirror, overcoming all manner of adverse conditions that are known only to them. And it reminded me to be merciful. Because we are all doing the very best we can to do the very best we can, from the little sapling that could, to me and you. Warped, but resilient, and hopefully, still recognizable as what we were meant to be.