Yesterday, a year and a day after Hurricane Helene brought unprecedented destruction to our city and so many others, I preached a sermon from Psalm 91. A message of hope in the face of life-threatening storms.
You can listen to that whole sermon HERE. Or, if you’d rather spend 3 minutes reading rather than 30 minutes listening, below is an article-ized version of it that will be coming out in our church Newsletter in October.
One year ago, Hurricane Helene tore through our community. We all woke up to a shocking new reality: trees down everywhere, homes destroyed, cars crushed, people trapped. Even now it’s hard to put into words. Some storms come only once in a hundred years, but others come much more often.
I’m not just talking about weather. Life brings storms of another kind: the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, a health crisis, or a broken relationship. Sometimes these storms arrive suddenly and hit harder than we ever imagined. They leave us shaken, wondering how to go on.
Psalm 91 speaks directly into that kind of fear and uncertainty. At its heart is verse 9: “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your habitation.” That verse gives us a picture of what it looks like to trust God.
The psalm uses two key images. The first is refuge—a hiding place, like a mountain cave when a storm sweeps in or an enemy pursues. A refuge is the place you run to when danger comes. The second image is habitation—a dwelling, a home. More than a temporary shelter, it’s the place where you live, rest, and belong.
Together, these two images reveal something beautiful about God: he is both our emergency shelter and our permanent dwelling. He is the One we run to when crisis strikes, and he is also the One we can live with every day in stability and peace.
That raises a simple but searching question: have you made God both your home and your hideout? In everyday life, making God your home means establishing rhythms of being with Jesus—prayer, Scripture, worship, silence. And when storms come, making him your hideout means turning quickly to him in prayer and reaching out for the support of Christian community.
If we only seek God as a last-minute hideout, we may find it harder to trust when the storm hits. But when we make our home in him daily, we will always know where to run when trouble comes.
The good news of Psalm 91 is this: The Lord protects those who make him both their home and their hideout.