Children's Moment: Hope in sunflowers

Wooo hooooo!!!!!  Does anyone know what tomorrow is?  It’s the first day of school for most of you.  How exciting right?

Have any of you ever gotten nervous about returning to school?  Or trying a new activity? Or meeting new friends?  Or even sharing your faith, sharing Jesus with someone?

Well, I have.  I have gotten nervous about starting new jobs, making new friends and about sharing my faith with others.  I am a planner, which means I like to know exactly what is going to happen, all the time.  I don’t always know how every situation will turn out and that sometimes causes me to worry or be a bit nervous. 

When I think about my feelings of “not knowing”, I think about my sunflowers.  Sounds funny right?  Early on in the summer, we had great rains.  All of our crops were washed away – corn, squash, beans, okra.  We replanted and again, all of our crops were washed away, or so I thought.  I was beginning to think we wouldn’t have a single crop this year, I was getting pretty worried.  After a week of dry weather, I decided to go out once more to look at our crop fields to determine what we needed to do.  I walked past our first plot and saw only weeds had survived the rains, the same for the second plot . . . only weeds, I was becoming very disheartened, but proceeded on to our third plot.  In front of our third plot stands a cross which is about 10’ tall.  I made my way over to the cross and stood there saying a little prayer “Lord, I don’t know what we should do or if having a garden is even a good idea, but I have faith that you can make our plants grow”.  As I had my head bowed, I noticed something green and in a straight row growing. Guess what?  It was the sunflowers I had planted.  They were growing straight up, despite the wind and washouts.  Those sunflowers gave me hope.

We replanted our crops again and have had a bountiful harvest despite the rains this year.  One of my favorite harvests was yesterday.  We harvested our first batch of sunflowers.  From this tiny little seed, 8 foot tall plants grew and now we have thousands of sunflower seeds which we will get to enjoy.

God tells us in Matthew 17:20

Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

As you return to school this week, I hope you will remember, nothing is impossible for God.  He can help you with anything you need.  Next time you get a little nervous, remember the sunflowers and God’s promise – nothing is impossible.

Let us pray: Dear God, thank you for this beautiful day.  Thank you for letting us worship in your house today.  Thank you for all that you provide.    I pray that each one of the children is able to trust you, to have faith even as small as a sunflower seed.  It’s in Jesus name, Amen.