The Last Phone Call from the Rubble

In October 2023, rescue workers in Hatay, Turkey — still clearing wreckage from the February earthquake — recovered a cell phone from beneath a collapsed apartment building. Its call log showed something remarkable. In the final minutes before the building pancaked, the phone's owner, a thirty-four-year-old teacher named Elif, had not called emergency services. She had called her mother. The conversation lasted ninety-one seconds. Elif did not survive, but her mother later told reporters through tears, "She said, 'Mama, I need you to know I am sorry, and I love you.' That was all. That was everything."

When every pretense is stripped away — when the rubble is pressing down and the lights have gone out — we discover who we really call. Samson knew this. Blinded, shackled, paraded like a circus animal through the temple of Dagon, he had nothing left. No hair, no strength, no dignity. The man who had squandered every gift the Almighty had given him did the one thing he should have done all along. He prayed. "O Lord God, remember me. Strengthen me just this once."

That prayer is the rawest sentence in the book of Judges — a broken man reaching upward with empty hands. And the God who had every reason to turn away leaned in and listened. Because the Lord does not wait for polished prayers. He waits for honest ones.