The Beauty of Creation

I’ve told you before that summer is my favorite time of year.  Well, this just may be my favorite time of summer.  Why?  Because the sunflowers are in bloom!

Maybe, to those of you who’ve lived around here all your lives, seeing the sunflowers is no big deal.  But nobody grew sunflowers where I grew up.  I mean, there were a few scraggly wild sunflowers, but nothing like what we have around here.  I think the first time I ever saw an actual field of sunflowers was when we took a band trip to North Dakota when I was in college.  That was in October, though, so the time of their true beauty had long since passed.

If you get a chance, take a look at a field of sunflowers in bloom.  The bright gold contrasted with the dark green is just incredibly beautiful.  And the uniformity of it--all the sunflowers the same height, in perfect rows--is incredibly beautiful, too.

When I see something in nature that beautiful, it convinces me all the more, not just that God exists, but that God loves us.  Because, if you think about it, God would not have had to make sunflowers look that beautiful.  God could’ve made sunflowers grey.  God could’ve made then a dull, ugly sort of brown.  God could’ve made sunflowers look any way God chose.  But God chose to make them look beautiful.  

The beauty of a field of sunflowers--the beauty of anything in nature--is a gift from God.  It’s a gift to us.  It tells us that God enjoys the act of creating, that God likes to create things that are beautiful, and that God likes it when we enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the things God has created.

And by the way, that includes you and me, too.  God enjoyed creating you.  God created you to be beautiful, and God likes it when you enjoy and appreciate the fact that you are beautiful, too.  Even if others don’t think so, God thinks so.  And God wants you to think so, too.

There is beauty all around us, if we stop and look for it.  Try to see the beauty of everything around you.  And try to see your own beauty, too.