When the University of Alabama baseball team played in the NCAA Regionals, two of the team’s players carried a Bible verse with them. Actually, Josh Rosecrans, a catcher, and Nate Kennedy, a pitcher, have already memorized the verse by heart.

There is a wonderful story about the verse. Six years ago a woman named Connie Matthes wrote its words on an index card and taped it to the bathroom mirror in a small house in Tuscaloosa. The Matthes’ son, Kent, had signed a baseball scholarship at Alabama and they bought the house for him to live in during college.

Well, the house at 308 17th Avenue quickly became “the fun house.” After games all the Crimson Tide baseball players would gather to grill and barbeque. It became an off-campus haven for the athletes and the verse fit in perfectly. Connie wanted her son Kent to be constantly reminded to stay close to God, to stay focused on the Lord, and remember God would take care of him.

The verse apparently worked. Kent is now an outfielder in the Colorado Rockies organization, this after he became Alabama’s greatest home run leader of all time. And rather than sell “the fun house” when Kent graduated, the Matthes family rented it instead to two of Kent’s Crimson Tide teammates, Josh Rosecrans and Nate Kennedy.

It just so happens both Josh and Nate happened to like the verse and kept Connie’s index card taped on the bathroom mirror.

On April 27 the two players were still at home on 17th Avenue when they heard the storm sirens go off. They immediately turned on TV and heard a tornado was bearing down on Tuscaloosa. Looking out the window, they could see a huge funnel in the distance, popping electrical transformers and demolishing the cityscape.

A frantic Rosecrans was on the telephone with his dad, who immediately told him to get a mattress and for the two players to hold it over them as they got in the bathroom. He told them to even get in the bathtub, of all places, and to use the mattress as an overhead shield.

Within only seconds total bedlam broke loose. They could hear the walls being ripped away by the roaring winds. Their ears were popping like crazy, there was a huge sucking sensation, and they used every fiber of muscle to hold the mattress in the most terrifying 20 seconds either has ever experienced. Then the storm, one that would kill nearly 250 people, was gone.

The silence now deafening, they cautiously climbed out of the bathtub. “The fun house” was also totally gone, all except one inside wall. On that wall was the bathroom mirror and, on it, was a small index card from Psalms 121 that read: “The Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life. The Lord will protect your coming and going both now and forever more.”

The two shaken players ran across the remaining slab of the foundation to where an elderly man lived behind them. The pitcher and the catcher managed to dig their grateful neighbor out of the rubble and then they realized that everything they had was gone – their clothes, the TV, all their stuff – and that only the Bible verse remained.

“I’m going to keep that Bible verse with me the rest of my life,” said Rosecrans.

“The Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life …. ”

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