The Overhang on Franconia Ridge

Sarah Whitfield was four miles above treeline on Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire's White Mountains when the sky split open. No warning — just a crack of thunder that rattled her teeth, then rain so thick she couldn't see her own boots.

The trail disappeared. Lightning struck the summit cairn fifty yards behind her. Every exposed ridge became a conductor.

She ran. Not down — there wasn't time — but toward the granite overhang she'd passed ten minutes earlier. A shallow shelf of rock, barely six feet deep, jutting from the mountainside like an outstretched hand.

She pressed her back against cold stone. Rain hammered the ledge above her. Wind screamed across the ridge. But under that rock, she was dry. She was still. Her heartbeat slowed.

The prophet Nahum wrote to a people who knew what it meant to have the sky split open — not with lightning, but with Assyria's armies bearing down on them. Nineveh was coming, and there was nowhere to run. But Nahum delivered this truth: "The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him."

God is not a fair-weather companion. He is the overhang on the exposed ridge — solid, immovable, already there before the storm arrived. When everything around you becomes a conductor for danger, the Almighty offers a shelter not of your own making. You don't build it. You don't earn it. You press your back against it and find that it holds.