This picture was taken right after Hurricane Sandy

This is our house.  We built it in 1998.  It sits on 32 pilings driven to refusal and stands across the street from the Toms River.  
Two days before Hurricane Sandy (then expected to bypass us) arrived, I woke up with a sentence in my head, "My proud waves with stop."  On impulse, I typed it into my computer and discovered that it is a quote from Job 38:11.  
That was a big surprise because Job is not my favorite book in the Bible, and I don't remember it in any other context.  However, there it was..."My proud waves will stop"  ..out of  context but hanging in my mind.
In any case, during the next two days Hurricane Sandy was joined by a Northeaster and blasted its way across the barrier reef, carrying houses, roads, and sand in front of it.  ''Sandy" tore the area apart, damaging and destroying as it went and headed up our river. 
Our neighbors, Kevin and Janine, called us on the phone.  They wanted us to move up the hill behind us and to stay with us.  We decided to go, but did some dumb things.  We didn't move my new car from the garage.  We didn't block the front of the house with sandbags or, for that matter, anything else.  We didn't bring food with us or clothing. 
We ended up staying at our neighbors for three days.  We wandered downhill toward our street only to be blocked from it by a flood.
Kevin decided to put on his wetsuit and take a camera with him.  The picture he took from the floating boardwalk is the one at the top of this page.  
When we finally were able to return we found a miracle had occurred.  Our house, although surrounded by water, was untouched.   The boardwalk had ended up on our front lawn, our neighbor's stone "Madonna" had been washed into our garden.  The water had stopped at the porch, gone around the house, stopped at the door of the garage, filled the pool with mud, washed out the wetland, and flooded the basement of the house behind us.  It left our house untouched.
We had trouble convincing our insurance company that there was no water in our crawl space.  Three men examined it and came to to the same conclusion...it was dry!  
Our insurance company said it was impossible..Despite their examination they sent us a check for $2000 (+) and we deposited it in a special bank account.   They insisted that we must have damage.  But we did not....and we sent the money back to them early the following fall.  
The Lord had given us a wonderful gift...our house was safe...but He also gave us another gift...His word does not return to Him void.  He keeps His promises!  He has the power to grant what He wants to grant.  He has blessed us over and over again....not because we are special...but because we are His!  May His name be praised!!!!