Most things that grow in soil, grow in soil that is soft. Soil full of nutrients, where the water falls plentifully from the sky, and the seed has what it needs to grow from a single spec into a mighty mountain. It’s dropped into this soil by a wind of chance, an accident of fate, or by God. An animal carries the seed to the soil, then shakes its body, tossing it into a crease, where the shifting and shaking terrain consumes the seed, burying it dead to be raised again to life.
Good soil is good growth, and the seed that is placed in it will grow almost certainly. But there is one species that thrives in rocky terrain. It is a strange thing that hard ground grows and soft soil kills. A thing that draws life from strife and struggle. That thing is man. A man born into soft soil does not mind at first. There is no pressure to take note. He feels that he is floating, his arms and legs cushioned from the world by the gentle dirt of his birth.
He is given plenty of water, nutrients, and sunlight, and his flesh grows large and weak. A man of weak flesh is no man at all, and the man of gentle circumstance grows weak flesh. Soft soil cannot yield a sturdy structure, so that man is bound to the soil, trapped by the nurture he received without struggle.
Only a man planted in hard ground will build up callouses. Pushing against the cracked and sandy rock, his skin is stretched taught, his bones are strong, and his muscles tense. He pushes his entire life, until the hard ground gives, tearing his roots out of it to find the air is much softer than the ground he is accustomed to. He pulls himself out of the rocky pit of his youth, and enters a world that needs him but could not make him.
The hard ground of your youth. The wind of chance blown by God took you there to make you. You are made what your world needs by that ground, and a man grown in it breaks free to serve where is needed. It’s the man of soft soil who stays planted.