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Sunflower Sermons
Watercolor

My husband is a pastor and almost every fall he writes a 'Sunflower Sermon' which is always a favorite. Here's and excerpt from this fall's sermon.
Sunflowers and Christians.

What do they have in common? Quite a few it seems. For starters, we call it a "sunflower", because it looks like the sun (or at least like our drawings of the sun). In the same way, followers of Christ are called "Christian" because God's goal for us is to "look like" His Son, Christ.

Another similarity is that sunflowers grow and bear fruit (benefitting lots of birds, squirrels and baseball players) by setting their "face" to the sun and following it. The same is true of Christians ("Sonflowers"??). We grow in our faith and become a blessing to others by setting our face to the Son and following Him (reading our Bibles, worshiping and praying).

Recently, God use a certain sunflower, the biggest one in our yard, to reinforce yet another biblical truth. This sunflower caught my eye, not because of its size, but because of the way it was facing: north. Straight north. Not tilted even a fraction of an inch toward the sun. It looked to me

like this old, mature sunflower was determined to "do things his own way." I didn't have much hope for this sunflower to change. It was very mature and the stalk was thick. It had been facing north a long time. It wouldn't turn easily like the younger ones.

A few days later I thought I detected an ever-so-slight turn toward the east. I figured it must be my imagination. A couple days later, Violet, said, "Did you see our sunflower?" (She'd been keeping an eye on it, too.) Sure enough, I wasn't imagining things. It had definitely started to turn. Today the sunflower faces almost straight east.

The lesson may be obvious, but no matter how set in your ways; no matter how long you've tried to do things your own way; no matter how long you've tried to ignore the Son, it's not yet too late for the Son to turn you. The sun has the power to turn the sunflower. The power of the Son's love and forgiveness can turn you to God too.