Searching for the Sun
By John Henri rorabeck
Quick, which direction is the sun coming from? From your left? From your right? Directly above you? If you’re reading outside on a sunny day, this should be easy to answer. However, if you’re inside or if it’s nighttime, it might be difficult to know exactly where the sun is right now. And of course, if you can find the sun, we all know that it’s not a bright idea to look directly at it, our nearest star!
While we never look at the sun, there are some plants that love to gaze directly at the brightest spot in the sky. Some of these plants are sunflowers. Growing up, I always heard sunflowers, like the common sunflower (Helianthus annuus), would move their giant flowers throughout the day to always face the sun. While it is true that young sunflowers do this before their buds open, once they actually bloom, their yellow flowers face east, ready for the rising sun each day. Sunflowers don’t move their flowers, but they do know where to find that precious light every morning!
Sunflowers are amazing plants, regardless of which way they are facing. Native to the Americas, they have been planted as a crop around the world. Native Americans grew sunflowers alongside their beans, corn, and squash, and for good reason. These cheery flowers provide seeds that animals and people eat, and oil extracted from those seeds are used in food and biofuel production.
Another incredible superpower the sunflower has is the ability to clean the soil it grows in. When sunflowers are planted in areas with such pollutants as lead and other heavy metals, these plants can extract those harmful materials from the soil in a process called phytoremediation (fy-toe-re-me-dee-ay-shun). Sunflowers make their environment healthier for others just by being themselves!
When I think about sunflowers and the incredible things they do, I’m reminded that God made us to be amazing! Just as the sunflower cleans up the environment that it lives in, we too can make the world around us a better place by sharing God’s love. Yes, we can literally remove litter from our neighborhoods and clean up our rooms, but we can make our environment cleaner in other ways as well. When a friend makes a joke about how someone else looks, we can gently remind them that everyone has been made in God’s image and that it’s not funny to make fun of people for any reason.
Remember how sunflowers move their unopened buds based on where the sun is? We do similar things as we grow up. All around us people are constantly trying to get our attention. Videos on social media and TV, songs on the radio, stories that we hear from our friends, all have a message to share. How do we know what to pay attention to? I’m reminded of what Mr. Rogers, the well-known TV show host, once said: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ ”
When we find the helpers, or become helpers ourselves, that’s when we catch a glimpse of Jesus’ love shining through. And that is a SON worth looking at!
John Henri Rorabeck is a naturalist and educator living in Maryland.