The Couple Who Planted an Orchard They Would Never See

In 2019, Howard and Lucille Granger, both in their late seventies, bought three hundred bare-root apple trees and planted them across four acres of rocky hillside in eastern Tennessee. Their neighbors thought they had lost their minds. Apple trees take seven to ten years to produce a meaningful harvest. Howard walked with a cane. Lucille had survived two rounds of chemotherapy. The math did not work in their favor.

But Howard told a reporter from the Knoxville News Sentinel something remarkable. "We are not planting these trees for ourselves. We are planting them because God told us this land should feed people. Whether we are here to see it or not does not change whether it is true."

By 2023, those trees began bearing fruit. A local food bank now harvests from that hillside every September. Howard died in 2021. Lucille is still alive, watching volunteers carry bushels down the rows her husband staked out with twine and prayer.

Abraham believed God when every reasonable calculation said the promise was impossible. He was nearly a hundred years old. Sarah's womb was dead. Yet scripture tells us he did not waver but grew strong in faith, fully convinced that what the Almighty had promised, He was able to do. And it was credited to him as righteousness.