The Storm Cellar on Maple Creek Road

Sarah Hendricks had lived her whole life on the Kansas plains, and she knew the sky the way a sailor knows the sea. She could read a greenish horizon, smell the electricity in still air, feel the particular silence that settles over a farm just before everything turns violent.

The afternoon her youngest daughter was visiting with the grandchildren, the radio crackled its warning at 3:47 p.m. Sarah didn't hesitate. She gathered those three small children — ages two, five, and seven — and walked them with steady purpose to the storm cellar at the edge of the property. She had stocked it herself: water, flashlights, a blanket, a worn Bible. She pulled the heavy door shut and latched it from the inside.

Above them, an EF3 tornado took out two outbuildings and stripped bark from every tree along the creek. Below ground, her five-year-old granddaughter fell asleep on her lap.

That is the image the psalmist reaches for when he describes the life of faith. Not a distant safety negotiated from far away, but a closeness — a dwelling. The Hebrew word yashab means to sit down, to settle in, to make your home there. "Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty."