My neighbor buddy, aka “Jack-Attack” walked up my sidewalk the other night with the twelve-foot-long sunflower stalk I left by our little library. He hoisted it over his head looking all the part of a victorious hunter returning with Lion… “hey Bryan, can I bring this back to my house?”… both ends bobbing up and down with each step.
“Of course Jack-Jack, go ahead buddy!”
He made it to the end of our walk when another little neighbor spotted his prey and came running down the side walk. They took turns hoisting it over their heads like a barbell and then it broke and became two staffs, broke again and became two swords… and so it went until it was reduced to a pile of shreds.
I hadn’t noticed their sisters ask my wife if they could eat the sunflower seeds. “You need to bake and dry them” she said so they sat down and picked apart the almost 20 inch flower head until it too was reduced to a pile of shreds.
This was my plan all along. Folks stopped all week before the carnage occurred pointing at the huge stalk and lifted the flower head that weighed several pounds.
I grow giant sunflowers to stop my neighbors in their tracks, to be still and look up and marvel at beauty, and reclaim the gift of being astonished at nature… perhaps to figure out that there is still lovely in the world and God keeps doing his thing day in-day out regardless of us.
We’ve become known as “the sunflower house”. I like that.
My house growing up was known for other things; loud yelling, breaking things, police looking for my brother. They once run through our house chasing him. Times have changed and he is no longer being chased but those memories setting into places.
Not my house. Not the sunflower house. We are known for flowers that tower over your head, and colors that attract butterflies and goldfinches and Humming Birds. We “host” a little library for young and old, reserving the lower shelf for little book worms who can’t reach too high yet.
As followers of Jesus we were saved and commanded to be a blessing to the nations and to be witness in Judea, Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth. This begins with the house next door and across the street.
are you planting Heaven on Earth too? All beauty is from Heaven you know, and Heaven heals.
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’ “If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate….
make the community livable again.”
Isaiah 5:12 Message Translation