The Voice That Cut Through Static in Guayama

When Hurricane Maria obliterated Puerto Rico's power grid in September 2017, the island went silent. No cell towers, no internet, no landlines. Three and a half million people were cut off from the world and from each other. In the coastal town of Guayama, families huddled in damaged homes with no way to know if help was coming or if anyone beyond the mountains even knew they were alive.

Then came the ham radio operators. Volunteers like Rafael Martinez powered up battery-operated shortwave sets and began transmitting. His signal crackled through the static to the mainland: coordinates of the stranded, lists of the injured, pleas for insulin and clean water. But the most powerful thing he transmitted was a single sentence back to the people gathered around his antenna: "They know we're here. Help is on the way."

A grandmother who had been sitting in silence for four days began to weep. A teenager ran down the block shouting the news to neighbors. The relief had not yet arrived, but the word of it was enough to change everything.

Isaiah saw this kind of moment on a cosmic scale — messengers racing across the mountains, feet blistered and beautiful, carrying the news that the Almighty reigns and His salvation has come. The good news of God does what no other message can: it reaches people in their deepest silence and says, "You have not been forgotten." And like those neighbors in Guayama, our response is to lift our voices and sing.