Standing alone in the desolate savanna of Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, this acacia tree attracts animals from all around to its shade, as is seen by the hundreds of worn trails directed toward it…

This picture reminds me of the words of Jeremiah 17:

“The man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord, is blessed. He will be like a tree planted by water; it sends out its roots toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7-8).

That’s what you see here. Green in a sea of brown. Growth in a land that’s dead. Signs of life in the midst of a desert. When everything else around gives way to the heat and the dirt and the wind, the tree remains. And that “remaining” calls out to everything around it, and everything around it comes.

They come curiously, wondering how such a thing could still remain in a land so hostile and dead. They come, skeptical at first but still asking where the source of life is. They come, and they find shade.