The Concrete Room Beneath the Oklahoma Grass

On May 20, 2013, an EF5 tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, with winds topping 210 miles per hour. It leveled schools, shredded homes to their foundations, and left a scar across the earth seventeen miles long. But scattered throughout that devastation, families emerged from underground storm shelters — shaken, dust-covered, but alive.

Those shelters weren't built during the tornado. They were poured in concrete on quiet Saturday mornings, bolted into the earth when the sky was blue and the forecast was clear. The families who survived had made a decision long before the sirens ever wailed: they would trust the refuge already prepared for them.

Nahum 1:7 says, "The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him." Notice the prophet doesn't say God becomes good when trouble arrives. He is good — already, always, before the winds pick up. And He doesn't offer refuge to strangers. He knows those who come to Him. Not knows about them — knows them, the way a shepherd knows which lamb limps slightly on the left, which one startles at thunder.

The storm in Nahum was real — Assyria's empire was crumbling, and judgment was falling. But tucked into that dark prophecy, God reminded His people: I am your shelter, and I already know your name. You don't have to wait for the sirens. The door is open now.