The Storm Cellar on County Road 4

Margaret Hendricks had lived in Moore, Oklahoma, long enough to know the difference between a watch and a warning. On May 20, 2013, when the sky turned that sickly green and the sirens began their low wail, she did not hesitate. She grabbed her granddaughter's hand, scooped the dog under one arm, and ran — not to the car, not to the highway, but down twelve concrete steps into the storm cellar her late husband Earl had poured with his own hands thirty years before.

Above them, the EF5 tornado peeled houses off their foundations like labels off jars. Margaret could hear the freight-train roar, the shattering glass, the world being unmade. But eight feet underground, behind a steel door bolted into rebar and stone, she held that trembling little girl and whispered the only words that mattered: "Jesus is here. Jesus is here."

When they climbed out, the house was gone. The fence was gone. The oak tree she'd been married under — gone. But Margaret and her granddaughter stood blinking in the sunlight, alive.

Here is the wisdom of Solomon: "The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe." Notice the verb. The righteous run. Not stroll. Not consider. When the sirens of life sound — diagnosis, betrayal, grief — the wise do not freeze. They run to the name of the Almighty, and there, even when everything above them is torn away, they find themselves held.