After years away from home, Sebastião Salgado returned to his family’s Brazilian property with his wife Lélia. He was devastated over what he saw. The 1,750-acre property had become what Salgado described as “a bare crust.” His father and the surrounding landowners had cleared the trees off their lands. They wanted grassland to raise cattle for the global demand for beef. What they ended up with was a lifeless desert. All across the Rio Doce Valley, the forest shrunk to less than four percent of its original size.
Salgado said it was a mirror of what his own soul had become. The man had won great fame as a photojournalist covering the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans, but the horrors he documented sent him into a deep depression. “I had never imagined that man could be part of a species capable of such cruelty to its own members,” he wrote, “and I couldn’t accept it.”
His wife proposed that he take a break from photojournalism. Instead, they would focus on restoring at least the portion of the vast forest that once grew on their own property.
It took twenty years, but a forest was restored to that dead land. And hope was restored to Salgado’s soul in the process. “All the insects and birds and fish returned,” he said, “and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn.”
It’s a parable of what God can do in you. A wrong direction can be reversed. A marriage can be revived. A soul can be resuscitated. Whatever’s turned into a lifeless desert can flourish again! God promises, “I will plant trees in the barren desert…so all who see this miracle will understand…that it is the Lord who has done this” (Isaiah 41:19-20, NLT).
This Sunday I begin a series called “Reengage.” It’s your chance to reengage with some fundamental commitments that bring life! Join me at 10am on campus or online.
--Tom
(The information, quotes, and photographs for this devotional come from this Smithsonian magazine article, this Guardian article, and this YouTube video.)
Sign up here to receive Tom Goodman’s weekly devotional in your email inbox. Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter.