The Deed in the Safety Deposit Box

When Hurricane Katrina swallowed the Lower Ninth Ward in 2005, Marcus and Diane Thibodaux lost everything — furniture, photographs, their daughter's baby shoes, thirty-two years of memories soaked and scattered. Standing in the wreckage of their shotgun house on Deslonde Street, Diane wept into her hands while Marcus stared at what used to be their kitchen wall.

But three weeks later, sitting across from a FEMA counselor in a Baton Rouge shelter, Marcus pulled a single document from his jacket pocket — the deed to a small plot of land in Gonzales, Louisiana, left to him by his grandmother. It had been sitting in a safety deposit box at Whitney National Bank for nineteen years. He had almost forgotten it was there.

That inherited land became the foundation for their rebuilt life. A modest house went up by spring. Diane planted roses along the fence. Their grandchildren learned to ride bikes on that quiet road.

Marcus told his pastor something he never forgot: "The storm took what I had gathered. It couldn't touch what I had been given."

That is the testimony of Psalm 16. David declares, "Lord, You alone are my portion and my cup; You make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." When every earthly thing we have accumulated can be swept away overnight, the inheritance God gives — His presence, His joy, His path of life — remains untouched by any storm.