warm, bright, and happy.

sunflowers are my favorite flowers, and both sunflowers and the sun has been quite a significant symbol all my life. it starts with Gensomaden Saiyuki, a manga adaptation of Journey to the West, where Goku, the supposedly Monkey God, is in love with the sun. he describes Konzen's (the first person who loves him like a son) hair to be golden like the sun, shining brightly. this is one of the comics i grew up with, and i had learned a lot from it. this story is precious to me like we are to God. Goku's pure love for the sun, simply because it gives him warmth and hope, makes me smile. 

and then we have Vincent Van Gogh and his well-known 12 Sunflowers piece. Van Gogh lived a rather sad life. nobody liked him and nobody appreciated his art. he was depressed, and in the end he took his own life. what he had left for the living, and for all future generations, however, was not just his sob story. it was this piece, and many more. it was hope, light, joy, that he had left for us. he had created great masterpieces, and it was a shame for him to have died before the world realized his talents, but i would like to think that it was not much of a shame, because his works lived on, and it never stopped bringing smiles onto people's faces.

the last would be Tae Yang. now you would wonder why i'm mentioning a k-pop artist's name here. well, i had my k-pop phase, and Tae Yang was the sole reason why i even got into k-pop. Tae Yang, his stage name, means 'sun' in Korean. the reason why he had picked this name is because he hoped for his music to shine like the sun, and to give hope and warmth to people through his singing. his hardwork and determination inspired me a lot through my Form 6 years. he taught me never to give up, and his smile always made me smile in return. 

now these three things may not make a lot of sense to you, yet to me, these are precisely the things that kept me going. before i encountered God, these were the sort of hopes i tugged onto. the sun. a field of sunflowers. light and warmth meant a lot to me. i kept hoping and dreaming, because i knew the power of hope. that there will always be light. and then God finds me and i know for sure, that there is a light brighter than all lights, and a hope stronger than all hopes, which lies in Him. sunflowers remind me of warmth and light. it is a flower that faces the direction of the sunlight. it is loyal and endlessly hopeful, always seeking out the light. 

to me, i'm the sunflower and God is my sun. He guides me, and i follow. (:

that's why sunflowers are my favorite, and that's why both sunflowers and the sun mean so much to me. 

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: 

not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” 

― C.S. Lewis