The Farmer Who Wouldn't Sign

In 1987, a development company offered Raymond Watts three times the market value for his sixty-acre tobacco farm outside Lexington, Kentucky. When he refused, things got ugly fast. Someone poisoned his well. His insurance was canceled without explanation. A county inspector suddenly found code violations in a barn that had stood for forty years. Neighbors who had sold their parcels stopped speaking to him.

Raymond's wife, Donna, found him one night sitting on the porch steps with his head in his hands. "They're all against us," he said. "Every last one of them."

Donna sat down beside him. She didn't argue the point. Instead, she opened her Bible to Romans 8 and read aloud by the porch light: "If God is for us, who can be against us?"

Raymond looked at her. "That doesn't make them go away."