“Act of God,” as a commonplace insurance term, may never have been more dramatically applied than to the scarred steeple that, for now, still sits atop St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church in Pocomoke City, Maryland.
That scar, which slashes diagonally from the middle of the steeple down to the roofline of the church’s street-facing bell tower, was inflicted July 8 by a lightning bolt hurled from above. St. Mary’s was one of at least two churches in the region hit by lightning from a severe storm system that swept across the large peninsula of land on the Chesapeake Bay that makes up Maryland’s Eastern Shore, between Delaware and Virginia.
The lightning didn’t just put a gash in St. Mary’s steeple. It also rattled the church’s foundation and cracked the ancient pipes that connected the church to the city’s water main, forcing prompt action by church leaders to address the water seepage. To read more, click here
