Hanging by a thread, when bottom hits rock. The value of crises.

There was no food, but they were fed up. Fed-Ex: Food-nada.

A horrible famine had been brought about in a besieged city.

Faced with the desperateness of their situation, hanging by a food-famished thread, the four - forlorn, forgotten and forsaken-by-society - made a risky decision.

And therein lay the mechanism that put in motion a miracle of major proportions.

Their decision was a game-changer, literally a lifesaver, and it’s as true for us today as it was then.

The benefits bequeathed to others, let alone the blessings that befall us, are more often than not brought about when “bottom has hit rock.”

Many people bail at this point, like the ones described inside the city walls, tossing their values for self-serving survival.

Others do nothing which fits comedian Tim Allen’s description of a committee: “A group of people who decide to meet only to decide nothing can be done.”

Similarly, to consult with parties sympathetic is pathetic.

In his Op-Ed of June 23, 2020 Dennis Prager writes that religion, for example, “during comfortable times, provides two essentials to a happy and fulfilled life — community and meaning — but when tested, it often fails like an umbrella that fails to expand just as it starts to rain.”

And then there are those nameless others who, when it begins to pour, defy the odds, declare their independence, “damn the torpedoes” and decide to do something other than sit on their hands or cry in their beer.

Especially are the latter two – hands and beer - reprehensible when there’s a famine-of-values-based-decisions goin’ on.

And who are these ‘others’? The ones to whom we owe an un-payable debt of gratitude? The relative few who ‘refuse to lose’, who gut-check their gut (and find it empty) but nonetheless get off their butt and in a decision born of practicality do what others should have done, what others say can’t be done?

It wasn’t the leaders.

It was the lepers.

Not those residing in ivory towers of relative ease but those who can readily identify with those living on the edge.

Those who are desperate.

Leaders would do well to listen to and learn from the desperate.