But as for me, how good it is to be near God! I have made the Sovereign Lord my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do. Psalms 73:28

 

Only days after a devastating earthquake struck the countries of Turkey and Syria, the stories began to trickle out.

 

It was a very big man in white clothes that saved them, the little girl said. The five-year old had been trapped with her grandmother in a collapsed building for five days. The rescuers that finally reached them couldn’t believe that they’d survived in a small pocket under the rubble. It wasn’t scary, the child said, for the kind, big man in white clothes held the walls up for them the whole time.

 

Rabia Tufan of Shema Media, Turkey, shares a second story about a woman who made a frantic call to rescue services, stating that she knew exactly where her two sons had been buried. Rescuers met the hysterical woman at the site of a mountain of rubble and began digging at the exact place she directed them. Amazingly, two boys were found alive. As the boys emerged, rescuers looked around for the mother to reunite her with her children, but she was nowhere to be found. The boys told rescuers, “Our mother died four years ago!” “God is at work powerfully in this tragedy,” Rabia shared.

 

The writer of the Psalm 78 in the Bible had seen a long, tumultuous history of a people’s missteps and misfortunes. In all circumstances, he wrote, “…how good it is to be near God! I have made the Sovereign Lord my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do” (v.28). Yes, God is near to us, even in the disasters of our lives.

 

Has something shaken your life? The Bible says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).