The Cellar Beneath the Bombing

In September 1940, German bombers pounded London for fifty-seven consecutive nights. Margaret Hutchinson, a schoolteacher in Bermondsey, led her fourteen students each evening into the cellar beneath St. James Church. The walls shook. Dust sifted down like grey snow. Children pressed their faces into her coat and wept.

Above them, entire blocks burned. The docks along the Thames glowed orange for miles. Margaret had no power to stop the Luftwaffe, no way to extinguish the fires eating through her neighborhood. But she could do one thing — she could be the steady presence in that cellar. She sang hymns until her voice gave out, then whispered them. She learned every child's name, their parents' names, their favorite foods. When a boy named Arthur asked if they were going to die, she held his face in both hands and said, "Not tonight, love. Not here."

Nahum prophesied against Nineveh, the empire that had crushed nations like kindling. The entire book thunders with the Almighty's judgment against unchecked cruelty. But tucked into that storm is verse 7 — a cellar door swinging open: "The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him."

God does not promise to stop every fire. He promises to know you by name inside it.