Last June, I noticed something that looked like a weed pushing up from the soil in a flower pot in my garden. It was in the same pot in which the purple Clematis grow – which take over everything – so I was surprised to see another plant trying to muscle in on Clematis ground.

I reached to pull it, when that still, small voice inside said, “Stop.” I stopped.

The plant continued to grow. A few days later, I called my husband out into the garden to examine it with me. “We’ve got an alien intruder in the Clematis,” I said. “What do you make of that?”

He said, “It looks like a sunflower.”

I gasped. I had never grown sunflowers. But I love sunflowers. I love the way they stand strong, shine brightly and turn always toward the sun, ever optimistic and willing.

What’s more, sunflowers had taken on a kind of holy significance for me, ever since – in 2002 – I had come up with the sunflower analogy to explain the stages of the evolution of consciousness, and how those stages explain the underlying unity of the world religions.

So to have a sunflower suddenly crop up in a tiny blue pot in my back yard – when I didn’t plant it, when I’d been working my garden for about 7 years and had never brought a sunflower seed into my garden. I mean… a sunflower??

I continued to watch the spindly stalk grow, now mystified and increasingly awestruck. If it really was a sunflower, out of the blue, surely it was God speaking to me. Speaking to me through a bird that must have pooped into my flower pot, but nonetheless speaking to me.

Time and some searching on Google Images verified my husband’s hunch: it was indeed a sunflower. Then it became my task to determine in prayer what God was trying to tell me through that sunflower.

By the time the sunflower came to full glory, I felt I understood God’s message.

After my long decade of purification and letting go of agendas, God was saying, “It’s time.” Time to finally share what God had shown me. Time to bloom.

That’s when I started building this website.

Nine months later, this website is still under construction. I chip away at it a little bit each weekend, the only time I have in very, very busy work weeks. But it’s coming along, with just a few more pages to go, now.

Last September, after the sunflower had gone to seed, I collected its seeds carefully. I stored them in a jar. With the threat of frost now gone, yesterday I planted several of them, the next generation from my beloved, sunny messenger.

If the first sunflower brought a website, what this year’s crop of sunflowers will bring?