Summer Sunflowers

 The local sunflower fields are now in bloom...usually a sign that summer is waning and fall is around the corner.  I took some time during my lunch break near the noon hour on Friday to visit a field nearby and take five behind the lens.  It was a little difficult as the field had no trespassing signs posted, so I had to shoot from the roadside and from the drainage ditch!  As a shorter gal, that posed a bit of a challenge, but I did walk away with a few pictures worth sharing. 

One interesting thing that I can not convey in a visually exclusive medium is the noise a sunflower field makes!  This time of year the bees are out in full swing, and standing next to the field you could hear a  very distinct buzz from bees, not just flowers next to me, but purring like a little engine across the whole field!  Once it caught my attention I was pretty shocked at the ruckus these little guys could create....and I couldn't help but wonder how many bees were working that field.  I was definitely outnumbered!

Normally I share only one excerpt, but I found so many nice quotes using sunflowers as an illustration for contemplation I just couldn't choose....so I shared them all!  Way to be decisive!  Hope you enjoy!

By Charles Spurgeon:  

Excerpt from “Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden

“As the flower of the sun doth follow the sun, and openeth and shutteth according to the absence of that luminary; so doth the heart of a Christian move after God.”

How sweet it is to find our mind and heart turning Godward, as the heliotrope seeks the sun!  It is wise to turn away from all things in which God is not evidently present, but carefully to follow each movement of his shining face that we may always front his love, and bask in the beams of his favor.

A gleam of his sunlight should be prized, for it is far more than we deserve; and we should joyously receive it as the crocus drinks in the rich gold of the spring sun, and brims its cup therewith.  What will it be to dwell above, where the light no more goeth down, and the flowers feel no cold drops of the night?

By John MacDuff:

“Believers have been aptly called 'sunflowers'—turning their faces as the sunflower towards the Sun of Righteousness, and hanging their leaves in sadness and sorrow when that Sun is away. It will be in Heaven the emblem is complete. There, every flower in the heavenly garden will be turned Godwards, bathing its tints of loveliness in the glory that excels!”

                                                                                   By Octavius Winslow:



 



God has created in the human heart the desire for friendship. The sunflower turns not more instinctively to its orb,drinking in the golden beams of light and warmth, and returning its grateful smile, than turns the human heart to the friend it loves. The religion of Jesus is not indifferent to any noble sentiment of our humanity, but teaches us to cultivate that sentiment to its highest degree of development, and of consecration to God.



By J.C. Ryle:

We may fall short—but let us aim high. Let us walk in the full light of the Sun of righteousness, and then our graces will grow. Let us not be like trees on a cold north wall—weak, half-starved, and unfruitful. Let us rather strive to be like the sunflower—and follow the great Fountain of Light wherever He goes, and see Him with open face.



An overview of the obliging field I visited