The Eye of the Storm

Hurricane hunters with NOAA's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron fly directly into the most violent weather on earth. Their WP-3D Orion turboprops punch through walls of wind exceeding 150 miles per hour, enduring turbulence so severe that unsecured equipment becomes airborne. But the pilots will tell you something remarkable happens when they reach the center. Inside the eye, the air goes still. Sunlight breaks through. Some crews have reported seeing blue sky and even birds circling overhead, carried there by the storm and now resting in the one place the wind cannot touch.

The prophet Nahum wrote against a terrifying backdrop. Assyria had brutalized nations for generations, and God's righteous judgment was bearing down on Nineveh like a Category 5 hurricane. Nahum describes whirlwinds, floods, and overwhelming destruction. Yet right in the middle of that fearsome passage, he plants this truth: "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him."

This is no casual comfort. It is shelter forged in the fiercest conditions. God does not promise to remove us from the storm. He promises to be the eye of it — the place of impossible peace surrounded by forces we cannot withstand on our own. Like those birds circling in calm air while devastation rages on every side, those who trust in the Lord find that His goodness holds steady precisely where the danger is greatest.