The Morning the Floodwaters Surrounded the Farm

In March of 2019, the Missouri River swallowed David Hagen's soybean fields outside Hamburg, Iowa. He stood on the second-floor landing of his farmhouse at dawn, watching brown water stretch in every direction — swallowing fence posts, creeping up the barn doors, erasing the gravel road that was his only way out. Behind him, his wife Ellen clutched their two sleeping grandchildren. Ahead, nothing but rising water.

David had spent forty years solving problems with his own two hands. He could repair a combine in the dark, pull a calf in a blizzard, replant after hail. But standing on that landing, he had nothing. No engine to fix. No field to work. No road to drive. Every instinct screamed at him to do something, and there was absolutely nothing to do.

Then the sound of helicopter rotors broke through the gray sky. The National Guard had already been dispatched before David even knew to call. Rescue was coming while he was still calculating how hopeless things were.

This is exactly where Israel stood at the edge of the sea — Egyptian chariots thundering behind them, deep water ahead, and Moses declaring the most counterintuitive command in Scripture: "Stand firm. Be still. The LORD will fight for you."

Sometimes the bravest thing faith asks of us is not action but surrender — trusting that the Almighty is already moving on our behalf, even when we cannot see the road out.