Turning Toward the Son

In 2016, plant biologist Stacey Harmer and her team at UC Davis published a remarkable discovery in the journal Science. Young sunflowers, they found, track the sun across the sky each day — turning from east to west between dawn and dusk, then quietly resetting overnight to face east again by morning. This heliotropism is driven by differential growth on opposite sides of the stem, an elegant internal rhythm responding faithfully to the light.

But here is the detail that preaches: as sunflowers mature, they stop tracking. They settle permanently facing east. And Harmer's team discovered that this fixed posture actually serves them best — east-facing flowers warm up faster each morning, attracting five times more pollinating bees than flowers turned any other direction.

Obedience to God often feels like the daily discipline of turning. We redirect our attention, our habits, our desires toward Him again and again. Some mornings it comes easily. Some evenings we realize we have drifted far from where we started. But each turning strengthens something deep within us.

Those who practice the daily discipline of facing the Son eventually find themselves settled in the right direction — not rigid, but rooted. Their lives become warm and fruitful in ways they never could have engineered on their own. The Almighty does not ask us to follow Him across the sky to exhaust us. He is growing us into people who naturally face the light.