The Shelter That Knew Her Name

When Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston in August 2017, dumping more than fifty inches of rain in four days, Adrienne Davis watched the water rise past her front porch, past her mailbox, past the hood of her car. She waded through chest-deep floodwater carrying her three-year-old son above her head, not knowing where she was going — only that she had to move.

A neighbor in a fishing boat pulled them from the current and brought them to the George R. Brown Convention Center, where thousands of strangers huddled on cots under fluorescent lights. Adrienne felt invisible in that sea of displaced families. But then a volunteer knelt beside her, handed her son a dry blanket, and said, "We've been looking for you. Your mother called — she's safe in San Antonio. She told us your name."

In the middle of catastrophe, someone knew her name. Someone was already searching for her before she arrived.

That is the promise tucked into the storm-tossed book of Nahum. The prophet wrote during a violent era, when the Assyrian Empire crushed nations like kindling. Yet right there, between declarations of divine judgment, he planted this: "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him."

God is not a generic shelter. He is the refuge who knows your name, who is already looking for you before you stumble through the door. The floodwaters may rise, but the One who stands in the storm has never lost track of a single soul who trusted Him.