The psalmist speaks not of deliverance from suffering, but of God’s nearness to the broken. Today’s headlines record the particular anguish of those crushed—literally and figuratively—by forces beyond their control: the unexpected intensity of heat and water, the machinery of conflict, the fragility of human infrastructure. There is a kind of honesty in the psalm’s promise: not that God will prevent catastrophe, but that He draws near to those whose hearts are shattered by it. In moments when systems fail and the earth itself seems hostile, this nearness—this attentiveness to the contrite spirit—may be the form mercy takes.