If ever Genelle Guzman McMillan needed to know she was being held in the strong arms of a God she couldn't see, it was now.

It was just after 12:30 p.m. on September 12, 2001. The towers had fallen 27 hours earlier. Amazingly, Genelle was still alive. Although the 30-year-old Port Authority clerk had fallen from the 64th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, she had survived. But what were her chances of being rescued from the 10 stories of smoking rubble in which she was entombed?

Her head was squeezed between chunks of concrete while her legs were sandwiched by pieces of a stairway. Because her right hand was pinned under her leg, only her left hand was free. With that free hand she reached in the darkness, hoping to find something to hold on to—physically as well as emotionally.

But Genelle could not grasp anything. In the depths of despair and smoking debris, she began to pray. "I kept my hand out there, praying to God," she recalls. "Show me a sign. Show me a miracle. Show me that you're out there. Show me that you are listening to me."

Like many who feel overwhelmed and have nowhere else to turn, Genelle called out for help to a God she'd rejected earlier in her life.

Not long after, someone grabbed her hand. A man's voice identified himself as Paul. Although Genelle tried to open her eyes, she could not. Paul reassured her that she would be fine. He encouraged her to hold on to his hand.

According to a newspaper account, "She grabbed his hand. She remembers he was not wearing gloves—, unlike the firefighter who found her. She also remembers he grabbed her hand with two hands.

"He was holding my hand for a long time," she says. "And then other workers came and pulled me out."

Genelle Guzman McMillan was the last person pulled alive from the collapsed towers. But she is not the last person to experience being held by God when there seemed to be no hope of survival. The Scriptures often depict God's intervention with images of everlasting arms or enveloping hands. Out of seemingly nowhere, God's hands are there to hold us until help arrives or the storm passes.