“I don’t think there’s anything on this planet that more trumpets life than
the sunflower. For me that’s because of the reason behind its name. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it.
And that’s such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life.“
—from Calendar Girls by Tim Firth
Dear friends,
When my daughters were young, we always grew sunflowers in our garden in the back yard at the parsonage. Long after all the other summer flowers had withered and faded away, the sunflowers were still standing strong in all their glory. Some years they were taller than my two daughters when we came home from our summer vacation. We’d run out to the back yard to see what had happened while we were away, and we’d measure the girls against the tall sunflowers, with their sunny flower faces all turned in the same direction towards the sun.
Last year, we also learned that sunflowers have become the symbol of Ukraine. According to historians, the Spaniards brought this flower from the New World to Europe and they were introduced to Ukraine in the mid-1800’s. Now they represent a large part of that county’s economy and have become a symbol of peace, a symbol of life and love and hope for that war-torn land.
I’d like to think that we, the church, are like
those sunflowers. We’re always looking for the
light—for life and love, for the positive and
hopeful. It might be easier to focus to the negative. We live in a chaotic world, suffering and struggling in so many places, challenges to face and losses to grieve in our own lives. Sometimes we feel a sense of scarcity and uncertain about the future.
But then we come together to worship each week, sometimes in the sanctuary, sometimes on the lawn. We reach out to care for each other in times of sickness and sadness, we join forces to fill a food pantry or make a big pile of new backpacks, we plant gardens and celebrate seasons, we stretch ourselves to learn and grown, we give of ourselves and stand strong for love and justice.
As a community of faith for 195 years, I feel our faces have turned toward the light of God’s presence in these things. We are like the sunflowers in that garden plot. Our roots are deep within the history and tradition of our congregation, and our faces moving and seeking the sun. And therein lie the seeds that hold the promise of the future, whatever it will be.
As the summer ends and we begin a new (and 196th) year together, let’s be like those sunflowers, “satellite dishes“ for God’s light and love!
Blessings, Karen Nell