Tough circumstances are no match for the kind of inner strength fueled by hope. Let me illustrate:
- Lock him in a prison cell, beat him, and shipwreck him, and you have the apostle Paul.
- Deafen him, and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven.
- Cripple him, and you have a brilliant novelist and poet—Sir Walter Scott.
- Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.
- Burn him so severely that doctors say he’ll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham—the man who set the world’s one-mile record in 1934.
- Strike him down with polio, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- Call him a slow learner, label him “retarded,” and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.
- Have her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Rosa Parks.
- Subject him to torture in a Japanese prison camp for over three years, and you have a Louis Zamperini.