The Tower That Still Stands

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras, Louisiana, with 175-mile-per-hour winds and a storm surge that swallowed entire neighborhoods. In the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, nearly every structure was flattened or swept from its foundation. But on the corner of Caffin Avenue, a small brick church remained standing — water-damaged, battered, but upright — while houses on every side had been reduced to splinters and mud.

Residents who had sheltered inside that church during the storm later described the moment the levees broke. Water rose to their chests. The walls shook. Yet the building held. One elderly woman, Ruby Washington, told a reporter from the Times-Picayune, "I kept saying His name. That's all I had left. Just His name."

She wasn't reciting a magic formula. She was doing what the faithful have always done when everything else is torn away — she was running to the only refuge that cannot be moved.

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 stand still or figure things out on their own. They run. There is urgency, and there is direction. The name of the Almighty is not a passive comfort. It is a destination — a place you flee to when the surge is rising and the walls around you are giving way. His name holds when nothing else will.