Odds of Success

New York is a city where “making it” denotes something special.  A line from a song and now a clich? says, “If you can make it here you can make it anywhere”.  From Broadway to Wall Street, Chelsea to the Lincoln Center, from the Upper West Side to the Lower East Side, everywhere you look there are examples of designers, artists, dancers, business men and women, actors, and musicians making it as the world defines success.  Buried in this amazing community are thousands striving against the odds, working the angles, and doing everything to reach their goals.
 
I wish I could say that everyone who made it concurrently reached the pinnacle of personal success.  Given the trail of broken relationships, shattered lives of those successful and unsuccessful, and longing for something more by people across every spectrum, I cannot even begin to imagine the statement being true.  There seems to be a gap between our efforts and what our souls thirst for.  This gap has existed across generations.  Each puzzled – at times wondering aloud why the best of the best don’t seem to make it to the real peak.
 
There are many stories and conversations to point us towards the truth.  As hard and as simple as it is the reason for the seemingly eternal gap remains constant.  At the end of one conversation centuries ago, as the question was posed, “God, the Master, says, ‘It won't happen.  Nothing will come of it because the capital of Aram is Damascus and the king of Damascus is a mere man, Rezin.  As for Ephraim, in sixty-five years it will be rubble, nothing left of it.  The capital of Ephraim is Samaria, and the king of Samaria is the mere son of Remaliah.  If you don't take your stand in faith, you won't have a leg to stand on.’” (Isaiah 7.7-9) 
 
Faith is the key.  Faith in compassion, mercy, and unconditional acceptance.  Faith in community.  Faith in the idea love will win over justice.  God has made the case.  What remains undone rests within our souls.