The Storm Shelter on Meadow Lane

On May 20, 2013, an EF5 tornado carved a seventeen-mile path through Moore, Oklahoma, flattening entire neighborhoods in minutes. Wind speeds exceeded two hundred miles per hour. Houses that had stood for decades became unrecognizable debris fields in seconds.

But on Meadow Lane, the Hernandez family survived. When the sirens screamed across Cleveland County that afternoon, Maria Hernandez grabbed her three children and ran — not to a closet, not under a mattress, but down the concrete steps into the storm shelter her husband Carlos had poured with his own hands two summers earlier. The neighborhood thought he was being excessive. The shelter cost money they barely had. But Carlos had grown up in tornado country, and he knew that when the real storm comes, the only thing that matters is whether you have somewhere truly strong to run.

Above them, their roof peeled away like paper. Their minivan landed in a field three blocks east. But eight feet underground, surrounded by reinforced concrete and steel, Maria held her children and prayed, and not one of them was harmed.

Proverbs 18:10 says, "The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe." Notice the verse doesn't say the righteous simply admire the tower from a distance. They run to it. The safety isn't passive — it requires movement, trust, decision. When life's most devastating storms arrive, the name of Yahweh stands unshakable. But we must do the running.