The Seawall of Fudai

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake shattered the ocean floor off Japan's coast, unleashing tsunami waves that obliterated entire coastal towns. Over eighteen thousand people perished. But in the tiny fishing village of Fudai, in Iwate Prefecture, something remarkable happened — almost nothing. While neighboring towns were swallowed by forty-foot walls of black water, Fudai stood. The reason was a fifty-one-foot floodgate built into the hillside decades earlier by former mayor Kotaku Wamura, who had survived a tsunami as a child. Villagers had called the project wasteful, even foolish. The concrete barrier seemed absurdly oversized for a town of three thousand. But when the ocean rose and roared, when the mountains of water came crashing toward shore, that gate held. The sea raged on every side, yet Fudai did not fall.

The psalmist knew this kind of shelter — not concrete and steel, but the living presence of the Almighty. "God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day." The waters roar. The nations rage. Kingdoms topple like sandcastles. Yet the God who breaks the bow and shatters the spear stands like an immovable barrier between His people and destruction. We do not build our own seawalls. El Shaddai Himself is the wall, the gate, the refuge that holds when everything else gives way.