The Tree That Refused to Stay Buried

In October 2001, recovery workers sifting through the wreckage at Ground Zero discovered a Callery pear tree beneath the rubble — snapped nearly in half, roots charred black, with one living branch. By every reasonable measure, it should have been dead.

Parks Department workers transported it to a nursery in the Bronx, where caretakers spent years coaxing it back. Against all odds, green shoots pushed through the blackened trunk. New roots took hold. By 2010, the tree stood thirty feet tall and was replanted at the 9/11 Memorial, where it is now called the Survivor Tree. Millions have walked past it, witnesses to its impossible flourishing.

When Peter stood before the Pentecost crowd, he proclaimed something far more staggering. Jesus of Nazareth — crucified, buried, sealed in a tomb — had been raised to life by the power of God. "It was not possible for him to be held by" death, Peter declared. The grave had no more power to contain the Son of God than a heap of rubble had power to kill that stubborn pear tree.

But here is the difference: the tree's recovery took years of quiet tending. The resurrection of Jesus was God's thunderous, sovereign act — accomplished in three days, witnessed in broad daylight, and proclaimed without apology. "We all are witnesses," Peter said. Not rumor. Not speculation. Eyewitness testimony from people who staked everything on the truth that death had lost its grip forever.