Psalm 46
1 God is our refuge and strength,
always ready to help in times of trouble.
2 So we will not fear when earthquakes come
and the mountains crumble into the sea.
3 Let the oceans roar and foam.
Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge!
I never thought it would happen. I couldn’t have even imagined or dreamed that I would ever be in that situation. The mountain literally shook behind my body. This thing that we consider to be unmovable. It moved! The solid ground under my feet, which we rely on in every moment to hold us up, well it let me down. I couldn’t stand up from inside my tent. The ground was shaking so bad that you could not move. But the ground, the mountain, the EARTH did move. It was a feeling like no other. I can not completely explain how I felt or how it is even possible to comprehend it. It was like everything I knew and had come to think of as permanent was gone. If you can’t depend on the ground keeping you stable and holding you in place then what do you rely on? The thing that holds all life up, where the plants grow, where we build our houses, our lives…it was MOVING. But it’s not supposed to move. In those few short moments when it felt like the world was going to give out beneath my feet the only real solid ground was holding up my squad and myself – God.
When the trembling finally began to slow I managed to stand up. I looked to my right and Brandon was standing next to the trees. Then I looked to the right. Oh how I wish I hadn’t looked to the right. I turned and stood facing out toward the mountains, looking down into the valley. As I looked out I saw 2 houses turn into ruins. The roofs shifted forward and then they collapsed. Turned into rubble. The bricks and mud disappeared into a cloud of dust. As I looked there were clouds of dust all over the mountain sides. Then I heard the noise. People screaming and yelling all over the valley. Were they trapped inside? Were they hurt? I had no idea. The moments felt like hours…in reality they were only seconds, minutes.
I turned and went to the tarp, where the rest of the squad was. I told them what happened. I was shaking and crying. My beautiful and loving friend Bailey took me and held me while the first aftershock hit. When we were sure that the quake and aftershock was over the paramedics on our squad and a few of the men went down the mountainside to see if they could help. The rest of us, on Dustin Mick’s instructions, began to pack up our things. We couldn’t stay here. The danger on the mountainside was too great. We would have to move to higher ground.
And we did. We hiked back up the mountain we had come down less then 24 hours before. We went in groups of 5, going as efficiently as we could. Upon arriving at the top, God provided us with an unexpected blessing. WFP had some tents set up and welcomed us with open arms. They allowed us to set up in on of their tents and provided us with clean drinking water. Here we were, after an earthquake, living in a tent, feeling like displaced persons. But embrace it we did. Within a couple hours, a group was off to another village to see how they could help, others went to prayer with the people in the village next to our tents, and others still stayed back to prayer for the situation and those gone further. An earthquake is scary, but our faith and trust in God made us ready to minister in the heat of the moment.
No matter what happens in life, whether the earth crumbles, our house collapses or life falls apart, God holds us up. We are stable in His will and we are stable because He holds us in His arms. His protection cannot be topped, it cannot be broken. We have trust that God will always be with us. He is good in every moment and even through a 7.4 earthquake, He was good to P Squad.
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