Feild of Sunflowers

Back in 6th grade my room was decorated head to toe in sunflowers...wallpaper, bedspread, furniture, curtains. I went overboard. Don't know what the draw to them were. I do recall a popular perfume that all the 6th grade girls were wearing called 'Sunflowers' which I actually still have some remnants of under my sink. I spritzed it on a few months ago randomly...don't know how long perfume stays good but I feel like it smelt the same as it did 16 years ago.

I teach a class of 3 & 4 year olds. I get a new batch of kiddos every week and we study a particular country. A couple weeks ago we talked about Holland where Vincent van Gogh was born. He painted sunflowers and one of our projects for the week was a canvas painting/collage to replicate van Gogh's masterpiece. It was a process using clay, dyed coffee filters with watercolors & eyedroppers, tissue paper vases, oil pastels, and modge podge....and lots of direction. They all had their own original touches as all artists and people do.

I sometimes make treats for the kids receptions on Fridays to reflect our theme. Last week koala bear cupcakes for Australia and this time Sunflower cookies with chocolate centers. That week I was also inspired to make some sunflower pops to stick in cupcakes.

Sunflowers have kept popping up since then in random places and have been on my mind so today I looked them up on the Internet to further understand these bright rays of flower species and to satisfy my strange and recent images.

SUNFLOWER: "What is usually called the flower is actually a head (formally composite flower) of numerous florets (small flowers) crowded together." The outer florets are the yellow part and the inner florets mature into seeds. They are arranged in a spiral pattern by the 'golden angle' 137.5 degrees which then layout a pattern of spirals of the Fibonacci numbers....which are a sequence of numbers by which the two numbers previous add up to produce the next number like 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on. This makes the most efficient packing seed arrangement and a really cool design.

I look at this design and see God's fingerprints all over it. The detail, the shapes, the finite precision of lines. It's immaculate. A bunch of small flowers inside a big flower. Genius. So I look at and see this...we are all these seeds in the middle of this bigger flower. God and all creation are the bright yellow pedals...the big picture. We are all clustered around each other with a specific purpose, a specific design, a specific Fibonacci location in life, at specific angles on earth at all times. God's most efficient packing system...most effective and glorifying design.We are the maturing seeds. Maturing, being sanctified daily by the Holy Spirit to grow to be more like Christ. Jesus is the starter seed, at the center of everything, the very beginning. The Fibonacci sequence of who we are and our existence can't start without Him. He is that initial seed which is watered within us after we are aware of Him and what He did for us on the cross. And we are in the middle of the bright yellow pedals, the bigger flower. As we mature we look more and more like the big picture of Jesus...the big bright sunflower.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was god. He was with God in the beginning. through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." ~John 1: 1-4.

So when I see a feild of sunflowers...I know all of those grew out of One seed even though I can't see it under the dirt I know it's there...and because of that seed, I can see the feild of sunflowers. I can see the glory of God, the big picture because of that seed....Jesus.

"We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father full of grace and truth." ~John 1-14

If we know the Lord Jesus Christ we should be walking around like big sunflowers. Our brightness should be a reflection of His pedals. We were asked the other night by Robert what Jesus means to each of us...how we would describe Him. For me...He is in the details. He is the center. The focus of everything in my path and being. The glue that holds everything together, the bridge to God and truth, the first stroke of a design, the beginning number of the Fibonacci sequence, the inspiration for van Gogh's paintings and my cookies. Everything points to Him and He is connected to everything. I mean everything...even Sunflowers!Think about it next time your spitten' out sunflower seed shells into a cup or sprinkling them on your lunch salad :)