The Woman in the Tower of Constance

In 1730, French authorities locked nineteen-year-old Marie Durand inside the Tower of Constance in Aigues-Mortes, a circular stone fortress rising from the marshlands of southern France. Her crime was simple: she refused to renounce her Protestant faith. The dragon of state persecution had already consumed her brother, Pastor Pierre Durand, who was executed for preaching the gospel. Now the empire turned its fury toward her.

Marie could have spoken a single word of recantation and walked free. Instead, she remained. For thirty-eight years, she lived in that cold, damp tower alongside dozens of other imprisoned Huguenot women. Into the stone rim of the central well, she carved a single word that visitors can still read today: RÉSISTER. Resist.

Yet Marie did more than resist. She became a pastor to her fellow prisoners, writing letters, offering comfort, organizing their shared life into something that resembled not a dungeon but a congregation. God had prepared a place for her in the wilderness, and she transformed it into holy ground.

John's Revelation describes a woman pursued by a great dragon, yet carried by the Almighty to a place prepared in the wilderness where she would be nourished. Marie Durand lived that vision. The powers of this world will always rage against the faithful. But the God who opens His temple in heaven also opens a way through every wilderness, sustaining His people until the day when salvation and the kingdom arrive in full.