Toward the Light, Beyond the Field 9/21/2025

By Jennifer Richardson Holt

After the somber mood of last week, I felt I shouldn’t fling drivel at you this time. I wanted something lighter—still meaningful, but not heavy. Not that stories about hummingbird skirmishes or my daughter’s clever quips aren’t fitting in their own right, but I knew I wasn’t quite back in that space yet.

All week I knew what I wanted to say, but finding the words proved elusive. I scoured the recesses of my mind, hoping for something worthwhile, yet nothing clear would surface. Then, on Friday morning, making the same drive after dropping off my daughter at school, I looked at the familiar view and—for the first time—I truly saw the sunflowers.

They’re lovely even without symbolism: tall, bright, impossible to miss. That morning the sky itself seemed almost overdramatically magnificent. The sun had risen as a massive red orb, and wisps of cloud caught its fire, glowing with golden lacework as radiant beams spilled across the earth. Against that resplendent backdrop stood the flowers.

Each one, of course, faced the sun. That’s the endearing trait of sunflowers—they follow the light. The symbolism there is easy enough: we too should turn our faces toward the Light. That truth had not been lost on me earlier in the week, but it wasn’t quite what I needed to say.

On that morning, as I watched the clouds streaked with sunbeams and the flowers leaning toward them, I realized something. We cannot stop there. We cannot only be sunflowers in the field. While we absolutely should turn our backs to the darkness and seek what is good, true, and radiant, that is not the whole of our calling. Sunflowers in the field are beautiful, but they have another purpose when cut and placed in an arrangement. Whether set in a grand centerpiece or a simple Mason jar on a windowsill, they carry the sun with them.

If we face the Light, our task is not just to bask in it but to reflect it wherever we go. We cannot cling to beauty and goodness as treasures hoarded for ourselves—brightening only our own lives—while those around us starve for hope. A sunflower in a bouquet always whispers of the blazing sun. Its very name tells the story twice: it follows the sun in the field and it embodies the sun after leaving the soil. That is our task as well—not only to seek the Light, but to bring that same Light into the lives of others.

Truthfully, sunflowers have never been among my favorites. Perhaps because they’re yellow, a color I like least, or because of their broad, seedy centers when I’d rather a bloom overflowing with petals. But that morning changed something in me. I saw them as reminders: I am to be a bearer of the Light I claim to pursue. I don’t want anyone to be around me without sensing something different, something hopeful. I want them to be intrigued enough to ask what it is. And then, it becomes my calling to tell of the True Light and for the Hope and Joy I carry, no matter the circumstances. Lord knows today’s world could use more of that.

I have become emboldened of late. I have never been ashamed to be a Christian, though at times I’ve lived in ways that didn’t make me eager to wear the name loudly. I want that to change. If I carry this great Hope, yet look and sound no different than every other weary soul, then I’ve failed the very One I claim to follow. It is not enough to be a sunflower simply rejoicing in the field, though that is vital. I must also be a cut sunflower, bringing Light indoors to shadowed places.

Most people love receiving flowers because they uplift. May I be so centered in the Light that even in dim, ordinary spaces I brighten hearts the way a sunflower does, drawing smiles and drawing people closer. I never imagined I’d aspire to be a sunflower, yet they seem to carry more wisdom than I realized. Or perhaps, just perhaps, God chose this blossom to remind me that His will is rarely accomplished in my comfort zone. And maybe that’s why He gave me sunflowers.