One thing I love about the holidays is visiting my family.  This year, Mike and I are headed to spend Thanksgiving out in the hills of Blanco, TX with my parents.  If the season has been kind enough, some of the vibrant wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country will have lasted into the fall.  I love driving the winding back roads that seem to go on forever, watching the sky and searching for sunflowers.

I did a little Internet research on Sunflowers recently. They are interesting plants because when they are young, they exhibit heliotropism.  At sunrise, the faces of most sunflowers are turned towards the east. Over the course of the day, they move to track the sun from east to west, while at night they return to an eastward orientation (I got this information, of course, from Wikipedia).

This is a good picture of faith for us.  Hebrews 11 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”   Sometimes we think of faith as something we have, but it can be argued that faith is also something we do.  In Ancient Greek (the language in which the New Testament was written) the word faith – pistis – is the same root for the action word believe – pisteuo.  It means, “faith-ing” or exercising your faith.  But what does that look like?  After the writer of Hebrews defines faith, he gives a list of examples of people who exercised their faith.  At the end of that list, He says “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12: 1b-2a).  Jesus is the pioneer of our faith in that He is the source and beginning of it.  He is also the perfecter of our faith because as we continue on our journey with God, we look to him to sustain our faith.

In Numbers 21 there is a story where the people of Israel are hit with a plague that was brought by poisonous snakes, a plague that came upon them because they did not believe God would provide for them.  God instructed Moses to raise a bronze serpent on a pole, and whenever one of the sick people gazed on the pole, they would be healed.   Jesus later said in John 3:14-15, Jesus compares himself to this snake saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” 

Faith is not a one-time statement of belief to which I sign my name when I become a Christian.  Faith is my soul’s constant gaze upon God.  Just as the Israelites looked up at the bronze serpent, to exercise our faith is to look to Jesus.

The sunflower can teach us a lot.  Its face follows the sun because the sun is its source, its energy, which gives it the ability to grow as it should. In the same way, we must turn our gaze toward Jesus Christ who is our source, who gives us the ability to develop and become more like Him.  When we focus less on ourselves, and more on him, we will find that the things we are trying so hard to accomplish are being accomplished in us (Philippians 2:13)

Hebrews 12 shows great balance.  “Fixing our eyes on Jesus” allows him to work out faith in the onlooker’s life. “Let us run with perseverance” shows that the runner does not stop and blankly stare; rather, as he goes, He focuses on the example and love of Christ which empowers Him to continue on. I want to run, always focusing the gaze of my heart on the one who gives me the strength to keep going.   I want to be a jogging sunflower.