Year 2020 set a record for the Atlantic hurricane season—30 named storms, 12 hitting the continental United States—but tempests came in other shapes as well. Civil wars continued in Yemen and Syria, wildfires raged in the U.S. West, and China continued to menace the people of Hong Kong. Crises, conflicts, and close calls can remind Christians they are not home yet, but that God is still in control.

Santi Palacios/AP

Desperate travelers

Men from Morocco and Bangladesh sit in a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea as workers from the migrant rescue organization Open Arms approach. More than 80,000 migrants arrived in Europe via risky Mediterranean voyages in 2020. Hundreds of others died in the attempt.

Associated Press

Face of opposition

In Minsk, Belarus, 73-year-old protester Nina Bahinskaya holds the former Belarusian national flag outside her apartment building on Sept. 10. Bahinskaya became a recognizable face during mass demonstrations against the heavy-handed government of President Alexander Lukashenko. Critics claim Lukashenko’s landslide reelection in August was fraudulent.

Mark Humphrey/AP

Tennessee twisters

Debris from homes lies scattered near Cookeville, Tenn., on March 3 after a series of tornadoes tore through the state, killing 25 people and injuring more than 300.

Noah Berger/AP

West Coast aflame

Wildfire embers cast an orange glow on the Bidwell Bar Bridge in Oroville, Calif., on Sept. 9. The Bear Fire, sparked by lightning, was one of several massive California wildfires that drove what was by far the state’s worst wildfire season on record: 6,500 square miles burned and more than 10,000 structures destroyed.

Associated Press

Duck and cover

Civilians flee north out of Idlib, Syria, on Feb. 15 amid President Bashar al-Assad’s military campaign to retake rebel-controlled areas in the country’s northwest. The Syrian people have suffered under a civil war for nine years.

Felipe Dana/AP

Citywide blast

Men sit on a damaged balcony facing the site of the massive and deadly Aug. 4 port explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, caused by a fire that ignited 3,000 tons of stored fertilizer.

Vincent Yu/AP

In China’s grip

Riot police in Hong Kong arrest a protester at a pro-democracy demonstration in Causeway Bay on June 12. Communist leaders in Beijing over the summer imposed a vaguely worded national security law on the semi-autonomous region that allows authorities to crack down on any activity deemed subversive to the government.

Peter Dejong/AP

Upheld by a tail

A sculpture of a whale’s tail upholds a metro train car that slammed through the end of a section of elevated tracks in Spijkenisse, Netherlands, on Nov. 2. No one was hurt.