The Orchard on Hensley Road

In 2012, a late frost swept through middle Georgia and destroyed every peach blossom on Lane Southern Orchards' 1,500 acres near Fort Valley. Third-generation farmer Will McGehee walked the rows in silence. Bare branches. No fruit. A whole season — gone.

But peach farmers know something about sowing in tears. McGehee and his crew spent the barren months pruning, fertilizing, and tending trees that had nothing to show. Neighbors drove past and saw a man pouring sweat into dead-looking wood. Some called it foolish. McGehee called it faithfulness.

The following spring, those pruned and nourished trees exploded with the heaviest bloom the farm had seen in years. The 2013 harvest was extraordinary — not in spite of the devastation, but shaped by it. The severe pruning from the frost had forced the trees to redirect their energy. What looked like death was preparation.

The psalmist knew this rhythm. "Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them." Psalm 126 is not a promise that pain disappears. It is the testimony of a people who carried seed into frozen ground, who kept planting when every blossom had been stripped away — and who discovered that the God who restores the fortunes of Zion wastes nothing. Not a single tear. Not a single barren season. He brings the harvest home.