A Tale of 3 Cities, #1: Shreveport

For countless hundreds of years along the Red River, periodic flooding washed trees and brush from the soft soil along the banks and into the river. Eventually this formed the biggest logjam the world has ever seen. The native Caddo tribes said the wide river had always been covered with this logjam. They couldn’t imagine the river, or life, without it.

At its peak in the 1830s, this heap of dead, tangled trees stretched off and on for more than 160 miles. They called it “The Great Raft.” To open navigation on the Red River, the US Army Corps of Engineers, led by Henry Shreve, began to systematically remove the logs. He modified riverboats with cranes to lift logs and cleared enough by 1837 to open up riverboat traffic. Then the invention of nitroglycerin changed everything, and they basically blew up the whole mess from downstream to upstream.

For better, and for worse, this changed the land and water flow of Louisiana. And it still needs monitoring. But that’s another story.

The locals honored Captain Shreve by naming their new settlement after him—“Shreve Town.” A railway from Dallas was laid to connect with riverboats that paddled to the Gulf of Mexico. And this place would be the transit point, a river port aptly renamed “Shreveport,” the area where I now live.

Is there anything in your life that’s like that big logjam?
Something that hinders your progress or growth?
This logjam in your life may have been around so long that you can’t imagine your life without it.
And it may be so big or so entrenched that it appears impossible to clear.
And even if you start to clear it out or overcome it, you always have to work to keep it clear.

The prophet Isaiah exhorts us to remove obstacles to what God would do in our lives:
“Build up, build up, prepare the road!
Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.”
For this is what the high and exalted One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
(57:14–15)

Be honest with yourself: What obstacle needs removing in your life for you to move forward or for God to do a new work in your life?

What first step will you take?

Let’s get clearing…

—
Photo courtesy of riverhistorian.com