The Safe Room That Held Everything

In 2011, a massive EF5 tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, flattening entire neighborhoods in minutes. Wind speeds exceeded 200 miles per hour. Houses became kindling. Cars became missiles. The destruction was almost total.

But in the days that followed, rescue teams kept finding the same thing — people alive inside interior closets, bathtubs, basement corners. One family of five survived beneath a mattress in their hallway while every wall around them disintegrated. Their home was gone, but they were breathing. The storm had raged at full fury, and still it could not reach them in that small, sheltered place.

This is the portrait John paints in Revelation 12. A woman — radiant, clothed with the sun, crowned with stars — stands exposed before a dragon of terrible power. He waits to devour her child the moment it is born. Every force of destruction is aimed at the most vulnerable moment imaginable: a birth. And yet the child is snatched up to God and to His throne. The woman flees to a place prepared for her in the wilderness, a refuge the Almighty Himself has furnished.

The dragon is real. The danger is real. But so is the safe room God has built. The temple of heaven opens, the ark of the covenant appears, and a voice declares that salvation and kingdom power belong to our God. No storm — not even a cosmic one — can overpower what the Most High has determined to protect.