The Neighborhood That Held Still

On August 29, 2021, Hurricane Ida slammed into Port Fourchon, Louisiana, with 150-mile-per-hour winds. The bayou communities south of New Orleans watched the Gulf swallow roads whole. Power lines snapped like thread. In Grand Isle, virtually every structure sustained damage.

But forty miles north, in the small town of Thibodaux, residents at First Baptist gathered in their fellowship hall as the walls shuddered and rain drove sideways against the windows. Pastor Marcus Landry stood at the front, reading Psalm 46 by flashlight. "Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea — we will not fear." Outside, a century-old oak crashed across the parking lot. Inside, someone quietly said, "Amen."

They did not pretend the storm was not real. They heard the roaring. They felt the building groan. But they had anchored themselves to something the wind could not reach.

When dawn broke, they stepped outside to devastation — shingles scattered, fences flattened, waterlines climbing the walls of homes. And yet they organized. They cooked. They checked on neighbors. The chaos was real, but it did not have the final word.

This is the promise the psalmist declares: not that the mountains will never tremble, but that the Most High dwells in the midst of His people. God helps her at break of day. The earth may melt, kingdoms may fall, but the Lord of Hosts is with us. He makes wars cease. He breaks the bow. And in the wreckage, He is still God — our refuge, our stillness, our dawn.