The Storm Cellar on Chestnut Road

In Moore, Oklahoma, Dorothy Dixon keeps a steel-reinforced storm cellar beneath her backyard. She has lived through three major tornadoes, including the devastating EF5 that flattened her neighborhood on May 20, 2013. When the sirens wail across Cleveland County, Dorothy does not stand at the window debating. She does not weigh her options. She grabs her grandchildren and runs.

That cellar is unremarkable from the outside — a concrete hatch, a set of narrow stairs, a heavy door that seals tight. But eight feet underground, anchored in bedrock, it holds firm while two-by-fours fly like javelins and cars tumble across parking lots. Everything above ground becomes uncertain. Everything below holds.

Dorothy will tell you the cellar only works if you go to it. Her neighbor in 2013 decided to ride out the storm in a hallway closet. The closet did not survive. The cellar, thirty yards away, did.

Proverbs 18:10 says, "The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe." Notice the verb. The righteous run. The tower does not chase us down. The refuge does not drag us inside. God offers His name — Yahweh, the covenant-keeping, storm-outlasting, bedrock-anchored presence — and invites us to move toward it. The safety is real. The shelter holds. But we must do the running.