Vincent van Gogh and I share a love for sunflowers.   It has nothing to do, I think,  with the fact that both of us were born in The Netherlands.  Maybe something to do with the fact that both his father and mine were ministers of the Dutch Reformed tradition.   Unlikely!   But probably some inklings to do with theology - something about Gospel and fecundity; something about generosity and joy; something about rooted in earth, but aspiring to more  Who knows?!

I'm glad that Ukrainians have a love for sunflowers as well.   The photo above comes not from Ukraine - its setting is in the Almaguin Highlands near Powassan, Ontario.   It wouldn't be hard to imagine these being fields of sunflowers dotting Ukraine's central and eastern steppes.   

Sunflowers come in various sizes.  I especially like the bigger ones   The yellow petals radiate light and joy like the sun.  But they also follow the course of the sun - cleaving to its brightness, its warmth, its generativity.   They seem to claim the relationship for a much larger purpose that just being in the now.

One reason I especially like big sunflowers is for their seeds.   Sure, they're vital for cooking oil, but also fun and healthy to eat.    What would a baseball game be without chawing away at sunflower seeds (a lot better that chawing tobacco, I'm told!!).   

But more than that, each sunflower seed multiplies its own kind 20-fold, 50-fold, 100-fold and the big ones produce far more.  Every flower hands on to next seed generations a resilient and worthy heritage:    the capacity to produce more flowers, more bright petals, yet more seeds to overcome earth's grayness and discordant ways, to fill the earth with light and joy, with luminous hope of transcending mortality.  (See William Blake's poem, "Ah, Sunflower.")

There is Gospel in sunflowers - a God-given sign for the healing of the human spirit and a potion for the healing of nations discerning its Gospel truth.   

I'd like to think this might have been factored into Ukraine's choice of national flower.  It is certainly being factored into support for Ukraine and its people as they are terrorized by Putin's killing machines and obedient soldiers destroying homes, hospitals, schools, and murdering people.   

Sunflower seeds were the core of an elderly Ukrainian woman's testimony to Russian soldiers as she handed them seeds and exclaimed, "at least sunflowers will grow when you all die and lie here."

In London, protesters have been weaving sunflowers into the iron-curtain fence of the Russian embassy.   

All who have a patch of earth and who deplore Putin's terror might plant an excess of sunflowers as ongoing signs both of resistance and of the divine intention.  Symbolic for sure - richly so!.   More "practical" life- giving and -saving responses are well known and await the action of all who condemn Putin's evil and terror.