The Fortress Above the Fjord

In 1940, when Nazi forces swept into Norway, a small congregation in the village of Rjukan found themselves trapped between occupation and despair. Their pastor, Leif Holstad, led seventeen families up a narrow mountain path to an abandoned stone farmstead perched on a granite shelf above the Vestfjord valley. The walls were three feet thick, built by hands that understood what winter demanded. For eleven months, that rough shelter became their church, their school, their hiding place.

Years later, Holstad's daughter recalled that her father never called it a hideout. He called it "our fortress." Every evening, by the light of a single oil lamp, he would read aloud from the psalms of David. The children memorized them without trying. The stone walls held the warmth. The narrow path made approach impossible without being seen. The rock beneath them did not shift, even when the world below burned.

David wrote the words of 2 Samuel 22:2-3 not from a palace but from memory — the memory of caves, cliffs, and wilderness places where the Lord Himself became the walls that would not break. "The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer," David sang, "my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge." He knew that the Almighty does not merely send shelter. He becomes it. When every human structure crumbles, the Most High stands firm beneath our feet and around our lives, immovable and sure.