The Safe Room

In 2011, a massive EF5 tornado carved a mile-wide path through Joplin, Missouri, flattening entire neighborhoods in minutes. Wind speeds exceeded 200 miles per hour. Among the devastation stood the story of a young mother named Bethany who, with her newborn son just three days old, huddled inside a reinforced closet while the world outside shattered into chaos. The roof peeled away. Glass exploded. Trees became missiles. But that small, fortified space held. When rescuers arrived, they found Bethany curled around her baby, both alive, sheltered in a pocket of safety the storm could not breach.

Revelation 12 paints a scene of cosmic danger — a woman in labor, a dragon crouching with open jaws, waiting to devour her child the moment he draws his first breath. The threat is total. The malice is ancient. Yet the Almighty has already prepared deliverance. The child is snatched up to God's throne. The woman is carried to a place prepared for her in the wilderness. And then that thundering declaration rings out: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God."

The dragon rages, but he cannot reach what God has chosen to protect. Like Bethany in that Joplin closet, we are held not by our own strength but by the shelter the Most High has built around us — a shelter no storm in heaven or earth can destroy.