Sunflowers: Pointing to a Way of Faith

One of the many delights of living in Morningside, Merchiston and  Bruntsfield is noting that our neighbourhoods are beautified with  colourful gardens and our wide-open spaces throughout the summer  period. In spring the bare soil was planted up, and over the ensuing  months the dark soil has been lost beneath the canopy of colour provided  by a rich variety of flowers, planted in a variety of displays in our gardens.  ​

This year the displays have been especially lovely, maybe because of the  ‘dark’ times that Covid has presented us all with. But have you also  noticed the vast array of sunflowers that have greeted shoppers entering Marks and Spencers, Tesco, Waitrose or those gardens touched by warm  walls and long exposure to the sun. Now sunflowers have a lovely  capacity to delight the eye of adult and child alike. Better still when they  are growing in a large field, standing several feet tall, the land, a sea of  yellow as far as the eye can see. You will notice that growing sunflowers  confidently tilt their heads to always face the sun. Once fully grown they  still maintain an eastward facing position.

The Christian church is no  stranger to the significance of facing eastward for prayer and worship. It  is rooted in ancient tradition—the Garden of Eden planted in the East  (Genesis 2:8) and a belief that the Messiah would approach Jerusalem from the East. In the 2nd century, we know that both Syrian and  Romanian Orthodox Christians hung a Christian cross on the eastern wall of their house, symbolising ‘their souls facing God, talking with him, and sharing their spirituality with the Lord’.

Perhaps the sunflower models a  deep truth for us, that growth into maturity comes through orientation  towards the sun’s light and warmth. As Christians we are called to prayerfully orientate our lives in the direction of the Son of God, whatever  the weather. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has  written a recent book entitled ‘Looking East in Winter.’ It’s an evocative  title. The winter of covid is not yet past, our lives may have held other  ‘wintry moments’ in recent times, but let the sunflowers inspire us to  keep ‘looking east’, to keep praying for the transformation of our lives and  our world. 
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Written by an Elder