Today's Scripture Reading (July 10, 2022): Psalm 58
In 1865, the town of St.
Thomas, Utah, was founded by a group of members of the Church of
Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). The town grew until, at
its peak, it had about 500 people living within it. St. Thomas was a business hub that served the farms in the area. The town was
even the county seat at one point in its history.
But in 1871, the area was
surveyed, and it was found that a previous survey had drawn the state
lines one degree north of where the state line should have been. As a result of that one-degree change, St. Thomas
found itself now in Nevada instead of Utah. Other nearby communities also found themselves with a similar problem, finding themselves in either Nevada
or Arizona instead
of Utah. The citizens of St. Thomas
woke up one
morning and found that the lines on a map had been moved,
and they were now citizens of a
different state. And Nevada attempted to make money off of the mistake. Nevada insisted that the citizens of St. Thomas owed them
six years of back taxes. And so, the citizens of St. Thomas made a huge decision. They decided to leave their property behind and abandon
the town rather than pay six years of back property taxes.
As the former citizens of the
town moved out, new citizens moved in, making the most of the town's
structures that were being left behind. And the town continued to thrive for another six
decades. But in 1931, during the early years of the Great Depression, the
Federal Government decided to build a dam on the state border between Nevada and Arizona. The Boulder Dam
resulted, and once it was finished, it threatened to flood the whole area. (In 1947, the
Boulder Dam was renamed the Hoover Dam.) Among the communities threatened by
the dam was the town of St. Thomas. The threatening flood waters of the reservoir that would
become Lake Mead
caused an exodus from St Thomas one more time. The last resident to leave St.
Thomas was Hugh Lord, who left the town on June 11, 1938. Soon the waters of
the reservoir created by the Boulder Dam flooded the village of St. Thomas. And St. Thomas now only existed under the waters of Lake
Mead.
But the combination of
drought and high-water demand has threatened the water of Lake Mead since 1983. Currently, the reservoir only holds about 25% of the capacity for which Lake Mead had been created. And as a result of the lack of water, the town of
St. Thomas has reemerged from the lake and now sits on the dry ground once again.
David prays that his enemy will disappear like water that runs away and is not
refilled. Maybe the current situation of Lake Mead is a good example of what David imagined. The once-great lake is great no more; its power has been weakened, and it has lost ground to drought. The water is running away and
cannot be refilled as long as the drought continues; David hoped that his enemies would do the same thing.
Now they are strong, but his petition to God was that their strength would be drained away, and their
weaknesses would be revealed in the process. If God answered his prayer, David's
enemies would no longer pose a threat to
the Poet-King and
Israel.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading:
Psalm 61
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