The Crack in the Sidewalk

Walk down any sidewalk in Chicago or Charlotte, and eventually you will spot it — a thin green shoot splitting through inches of concrete. A dandelion or blade of grass, seemingly fragile, fracturing a surface that was engineered to bear the weight of trucks. Botanists have measured the force a germinating seed can exert: hundreds of pounds per square inch of pressure, generated by nothing more than a hull of cellulose and the life locked inside it. The power is not in the seed's size. It is in what animates it.

Paul knew something about hidden power. When he declared to the Romans, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation," he used the Greek word dunamis — raw, explosive force. And he attached that word not to Rome's legions, not to Greek philosophy, not to any system the ancient world admired. He attached it to a message about a crucified carpenter from Nazareth.

That message looked as unimpressive as a seed wedged in a sidewalk crack. But it carried within it the life of God Himself — enough to split open the hardest heart, break through the thickest despair, and push toward the light in anyone who believes. Jew or Gentile, scholar or laborer, it makes no difference. The power is not in the messenger. The power is in the message.