The Farmer Who Sang at Dawn

Margaret Ellison walked her withered soybean fields outside Decatur, Illinois, in the summer of 2012. The worst drought in fifty years had turned her 200 acres to dust. The creek bed behind the barn lay cracked and white. Her husband Tom had died that March, and the crop insurance wouldn't cover half the loan payments. She had every reason to sit on the porch and let the screen door rust shut.

Instead, her neighbor Dale found her one August morning standing at the fence line, singing a hymn he hadn't heard since childhood. "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" — right there in the middle of a dead field, her boots coated in powder-dry soil.

Dale asked her how she could sing at a time like this. Margaret gripped the fence post and said, "Because if I wait until everything's good again to praise the Lord, I might never sing another note. He was faithful before the drought, and He'll be faithful after it."

That is the defiant faith of Habakkuk. The fig tree is bare. The olive crop has failed. The cattle stalls stand empty. And yet — yet — the prophet declares, "I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior." This is not blind optimism. It is a deliberate choice to anchor joy not in the harvest but in the Harvester, not in the provision but in the Provider. The Sovereign Lord remains our strength, even when every field lies fallow.