Last spring, my grandma was talking about how the news reported around fifty tornadoes already. She remembered one that devastated Udall a few days before she graduated from High School. While she spoke I thought, too, of the pictures of flooding in Oklahoma—houses with only their second story visible.

I know I have no guarantee that I will not someday be among those hit hard with disaster, losing everything. It makes me think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. When King Nebuchadnezzar threatened to throw them into the fiery furnance, they answered that God was able to deliver them from the fire, and would deliver them from the king’s hand. Even if God decided not to spare their lives, they would serve Him. God could rescue them—and He did—but they knew He was not obliged to do so.

Hebrews chapter eleven goes from those who through faith saw God’s miraculous works, to those who through faith endured hardship and death. They knew that God is the one eternal Rock, and would be their support both in life and through death.

Wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, pestilences and persecutions in this world will only get worse. They are but a shadow of judgement to come as unfolded in the book of Revelation. We do not know what sorrows will touch our lives. But we do know who our shelter is—the Lord Jesus Christ.