Psalm 55:8 I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.”
Whenever there is a storm, and especially if we come under a Tornado Watch or Warning, we glue ourselves to the weather reports while we make what preparations we can, and then we wait to see what will happen. Last week, our nerves were tested once again as reports flew about the oncoming storm and we wondered if we would see a repeat of 2011.
For most of us, the answer was “No”, but a few miles away in Pickens County the Bomb dropped. We know what that looks like. Roofs ripped off. Walls collapsed. Mobile homes turned into confetti. Mighty oaks become toothpicks.
Driving through the Sapps community above Aliceville was a rewind of Tuscaloosa, and I wondered how anyone survived this.
Then I saw the Shelter.
The Shelter was a carefully engineered and built concrete and steel structure, rated to hold 96 adults while withstanding winds in excess of 240 mph, and it stood solidly in place while a structure just 50 feet away was reduced to kindling. During the storm, it was packed to the gills, with over 200 people crammed in. That's right, well over 200. I was able to chat with a couple of men who were among the last to enter, and in their words, they “just barely got in.”
Knowing human nature as I do, I suspect there were some inside that wanted to complain about close quarters or someone stepping on their feet, but no one ever said so to me. After seeing what became of their world outside, I doubt any of them had anything bad to say about their experience – except their determination to build a second shelter and make sure that everyone had access. The few who rode out the storm in their homes – surprised by its speed, caught trying to help someone moving too slow, or not believing the warning – dramatically tested their prayer life.
One of the men from the shelter told me that the storm came and went in minutes. There were hours and hours, even days of warning, but the storm itself did not tarry in one place for long. It was over almost before they knew it, leaving rampant destruction in its wake, and many surprised with the joy they felt in surviving even though they had lost almost everything.
They were glad they had heeded the warning and hid themselves from danger. I know about that.
As a child, I heard the warning of impending doom and sought Shelter in Christ. Ever since, my mission in life is to warn others of the Tempest and open to them the Door of Salvation. Don't wait until the Storm is upon you! Come into the Shelter while there's still time! One day very soon, it will be too late!
Matthew 7:26-27 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
