Shelter from the Storm (Friday Devotional)

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

- Psalm 90:1-2

As we hiked along the trail, we took turns nervously looking up at the grey sky. Miles from our next campsite, my fellow Boy Scouts and I could smell and feel that a rainstorm was coming any second, and we knew there was little hope of escaping the downpour. Our backpacks were covered, our ponchos were on—now all we could do was continue hiking, hoping against hope that our socks and boots wouldn’t get too soaked when the clouds finally emptied.

Then, like a providential gift, our patrol leader spotted something up ahead. Along the mountain trail we were hiking, there was a spot where the rocks jutted out over the trail like a natural roof. We picked up the pace and, as we got closer, saw that this spot was large enough for us all to fit under—we were saved! Rushing beneath the formation, we dropped our packs, pulled out some snacks and, with comic timing, the storm let loose.

Dry as a bone beneath our natural shelter, I wondered how many people before us had used the rocky outgrowth for exactly this purpose. Had other hikers before us watched their own storms beneath its shade? Had the rangers who’d built this trail used it as a resting place in the middle of a long day? Had the settlers who’d pioneered the region retreated beneath it as bad weather approached? It was not even inconceivable to imagine that, hundreds of years earlier, a family of Native Americans had experienced the same relief we felt as nature saved them from a downpour. For as long as people had been wandering through these mountains, I imagined, they had been using this rock formation for shelter.

In Psalm 90, the writer imagines God as just such a shelter, a “dwelling place in all generations.” Even as the ages have dragged on, he seems to be saying, God has remained, a refuge and a hope for His people when storms assailed them. For all the ways our planet, its people, and its problems have changed, God has remained a constant sanctuary.

In our own time, storms still rage, in the world at large and in our own lives. Some days it feels like you spend every waking minute nervously looking up, waiting for the figurative clouds to empty and for the deluge to wash you away. But in those times of peak anxiety, God remains a shelter from the storm, a refuge to whom you can turn for spiritual comfort. Even when life’s storms seem unprecedented in their ferocity, even when protection from them appears impossible, look to the God who has been a dwelling place in all generations—because while storms come and go, the Rock of Ages remains.