The Neighborhood Nobody Forgot

When Hurricane Helene tore through Asheville, North Carolina in September 2024, the floodwaters swallowed entire blocks overnight. Roads buckled. Power vanished. Cell towers went silent. In the chaos, most people scrambled to protect what was theirs.

But on Fairview Road, a retired schoolteacher named Dorothy Clemmons unlocked her church fellowship hall before dawn. She had no authority to do so — she simply had the key and a lifetime habit of saying yes. By noon, her makeshift shelter held forty-seven neighbors, some she had never met. She organized meal shifts, collected blankets from her own closets, and sat with an elderly man who could not stop shaking. When someone asked how she stayed so calm, Dorothy said, "I already gave everything that matters to the Lord a long time ago. Floods can not take what I do not cling to."

The psalmist paints this exact portrait in Psalm 112. The one who fears the Almighty is "gracious, compassionate, and righteous," generous in lending, steady when darkness closes in. "They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord." This is not reckless optimism. It is the deep stability of a life anchored in something floodwaters cannot reach.

Dorothy Clemmons did not become generous the morning the storm hit. She had practiced open-handed living for decades. Psalm 112 reminds us that righteousness is not a crisis response — it is a lifestyle, and its fruit endures forever.