Editor’s Note: The Only Safe Place

Last October, when Hurricane Helene cut a path of fury into the Blue Ridge Mountains, my heart ached to see lives cut short, towns demolished, and livelihoods obliterated—a place erased. My family lives at the foothills of those mountains in South Carolina.

Sarah Eshleman
Editor in Chief

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” my mom said, describing the area. “It looks like a war zone.”

Until Helene, Asheville enjoyed status as a supposed climate-haven city, unaffected by extreme weather. Kathie Dello, North Carolina’s climatologist, said, “Canada has fires. Vermont floods. West Virginia has severe drought. There are heat issues in Phoenix. Where do you run from climate change?”

Even unbelievers sense that we’re living in a cursed world. Historic natural disasters. Wars and rumors of wars. Rampant shoplifting and identity theft. Violence in school lunchrooms and fast-food drive-thru lanes. Fake news from the media and misinformation in comment threads. Abuse and mistreatment in corporations and churches. A growing sense of lawlessness, from disregarded red lights to hostile takeovers of apartment buildings.

We look for safety in politically aligned states, search for security in climate policies, seek distraction in entertainment, hide in our homes. But we’re all running from the inescapable truth: no one can escape the fallout of a fallen world.

Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton, an Asheville suburb, said, “The last time a storm like this hit was in the Book of Genesis when Noah had to build an ark.”

But it’s hardly comparable. This localized flood merely illustrates how the global flood totally reshaped earth. The people outside Noah’s ark had no escape from the most significant climate change event in history. In God’s grace, Noah’s family survived the catastrophe.

Today we see God’s common grace at work in people sacrificing their safety to search for missing loved ones. Mule teams carrying insulin to cut-off residents. Search and rescue dogs sniffing out survivors. Local women washing the laundry of linemen. Rows of traffic outside aid organizations, waiting to volunteer. In the months to come, wildlife and plants will replenish those devastated mountain areas, a genetic grace Stephanie McDorman talks about in “Life In The City” (page 36).

In our sin-ravaged world, the only truly safe place is our trust in the saving grace of God who sent his Son to die for our sins and offer us a way to escape eternal judgment. Whatever ruin we face in this life, if we have put our faith in Christ, we can rest in the refuge of God’s sovereignty and goodness.