A sun and its flower.

People are like flowers. We're small, inconsequential... Still, what can we do? What can a flower do that is consequential and significant? When all is said and done, we're just dust and water gracefully arranged into bodies. Therefore, we must somehow relate to Something that lasts forever... God. A flower can only stand up tall, in all 3 inches of its glory, and point to Him. Not even Solomon in all his splendor was arrayed as one of these! 

Tonight many things rest on the hinge of a moment, just as every day. Crises are not rare. They happen every day. People die, they face that trauma and hopelessness. People wreck, get shot. Life is spilled so gracelessly on the merciless rocks of the earth. Yet, flowers grow in the cracks. Flowers like you and me. We must persist, despite the death and destruction, despite the sin and decay, despite the pollution and noise, and despite the temptation for greener grasses in which to root. 

You and I, we are the same. I sin, you sin, we all sin. We're equal. Turning to the mess around us, let us race for Christ, and run like athletes, though our enemies tear us to pieces. You know this goal is all that matters. Your life is not your own. You were seeded by God, a seedling that points to how wonderful He is. Look! He made billions of blossoms just like you! They are the body of Christ. Each one is the same, yet different and valuable. Each blossom needs the same things you do. The firm, warm, dark soil of Christ calls gently... do not deny your roots. Here is the cradle of all life, who can deny it? For from God comes every being, and their healing. 

Stretch your stalk to the sky. Try to reach that Sun, claim it for yourself. Grasp it with your petals, for your very own. Can you reach it? No. None can reach up to the Glory that is the Sustenance of all life. For life falls short of His glory, hopelessly, miserably, even ignorantly. For a flower that turns its back on the sun will perish and wither, another hopeless cause lost among the flowering beds of blossoms beside the stream of Time. 

Yes, on its own, a flower is just a flower. But when it knows its place, a humble mote of carbon and chlorophyll blessed and provided with a handful of soil and water (for us, Christ and the Word), it knows one thing: the Meaning of Life. And that is this: loving Christ is all we need. And so a flower and its Sun unite, perfectly completing each other in union. Yet a flower can never hope to lend anything to the Sun; the Sun needs nothing from the flower.  But it smiles on it anyway. And so the flower lives no more for its own glory. It belongs to the Sun now.

Winter comes. Petals begin to fall. Old and new... they are the same. The flower is bathed lovingly in its Lover's arms as it passes, just one more beautiful word in the story of Time.