The Seawall at Fudai

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake shook the Pacific floor and sent a forty-foot tsunami racing toward Japan's northeastern coast. Entire towns vanished. Nearly twenty thousand people perished. But in the tiny fishing village of Fudai, population three thousand, not a single life was lost.

Decades earlier, the village mayor, Kotoku Wamura, had survived a devastating tsunami as a child. He never forgot the roar of the water swallowing everything he knew. So when he took office, he fought for years to build a massive fifty-one-foot floodgate across the mouth of the valley — far taller than anyone thought necessary. Residents mocked it. Officials called it wasteful. Wamura insisted. He had seen what the sea could do.

When the 2011 wave came churning and foaming, mountains of water crashing against the coast, that gate held. The water slammed against concrete and steel, and the village behind it stood untouched. Wamura had died years before the tsunami arrived, but his provision outlasted him.

The psalmist knew this kind of security. Though the earth gives way, though the waters roar and foam, though kingdoms fall and nations rage — God is within her, she will not fall. The Almighty does not build His protection at the last minute. He is already there, a refuge and strength, an ever-present help. The wave comes. The gate holds. He has always been enough.