When the Singing Came Back to Joplin

On May 22, 2011, an EF5 tornado carved a mile-wide path through Joplin, Missouri, killing 158 people and leveling entire neighborhoods in minutes. St. Mary's Catholic Church lost its roof. College Heights Christian Church was gutted to the studs. For weeks, the only sounds were chainsaws and weeping.

But then something quiet began to happen. Volunteers from every denomination — Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Lutheran — showed up with work gloves and casserole dishes. They hauled debris in the rain. They held hands with strangers in parking lots that used to be sanctuaries. They planted seeds in torn-up ground, not knowing what would grow.

Fourteen months later, Joplin High School's graduating class walked across a brand-new stage. The entire stadium rose to its feet. People who had buried neighbors were laughing through tears, barely believing what they were seeing. "It was like waking up from a nightmare into a dream," one resident told reporters.

The psalmist knew that feeling — the stunned, almost disbelieving joy of people who have walked through devastation and come out the other side carrying something they never expected: a harvest. "Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy." The Almighty does not waste a single seed planted in sorrow. Every tear that falls on broken ground is working toward a homecoming we can barely imagine.