Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love! Psalm 31: 16

Sunflowers

"Grandma, those sunflowers are shining in my eyes," my three-year-old grandson said, squinting up into the faces of the sunflowers towering over him by our back deck. Isn't that delightful? It tells me that he knows not to look at the sun so he doesn't damage his eyes, and it also tells me that he can reason his way to a round yellow sunflower being like the round yellow sun. The ability to see the way in which one thing is like another, simile, is one of the most effective ways we have of teaching new things and gaining new understandings.

When speaking to the crowds who followed him, Jesus always spoke in parables and used simile to convey truth.

^"All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables;
    I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”"                                                         Matthew 13: 34 - 35

On the reason not to worry about tomorrow, Jesus says that Solomon in all his glory wasn't arrayed like the lilies the field. On the reason to build your life on a strong foundation, he says that everyone who hears God's word and does it is like the wise man who built his house on the rock. On the way the kingdom of heaven grows and branches out, he says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed a man took and planted in his field.

 Perhaps, if Jesus had been speaking to a crowd in my backyard, he would have gestured toward those towering sunflowers that each grew from one tiny seed.

 After the many similes Jesus uses to convey truth in the Parable of the Weeds, he says:

 "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear" (Matthew 13: 43).

 Shine like the sun. Yes! In yet another parable, Jesus says:

  "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18: 3 - 4).

 Become like children. . . Lord, give me the eyes to see the way a child sees. Give me simile and metaphor and humility that I may enter the kingdom of heaven like a child, not just when I die someday, but now, while I walk this earth. Give me as many sunflowers and grandchildren as I need.

Daye Phillippo

September 2021