What a cheerful welcome the warm face of the sunflower on the cover extends to all who read this publication! We heartily join in this greeting by inviting you to enter with us into the life of the sunflower in the pages that follow. It is our desire that every heart will be inspired by the practical lessons revealed in this remarkable, effervescent plant of God's design.

Immediately one is buoyed in spirit by the brightness of the sunflower's petals as they gaze at you with unchanging happiness emanating so unpretentiously and yet so gloriously. Many have come to know the cheerful effects of this "happy face," making it a popular decoration and subject of paintings and pictures. Vincent van Gogh's painting, "Sunflowers," sold for $40 million in 1987.

I believe that God has a spiritual lesson of great value for His people in this flower with a golden head. We should ever display the joy of the Lord in our countenance and in our life. "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4).

But how does one get this joy? It doesn't come from a person's jovial personality, or from anything within himself. The most gladsome of men, if not saved by God's grace, know nothing of the joy of the Lord, which comes simply as a result of enjoying the Person of Christ in His glorious perfection and redeeming work.

Joy is produced in the Christian as a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22). It is the "joy of Thy salvation" (Psalm 51:12) that fills one who is delighting in being eternally saved; sins and iniquities remembered no more; being justified from all things; never being subject to judgment; being fit for the holy presence of God; and the promise of the Saviour's soon coming to receive him to Himself forever.

The joy of the Lord does not come from knowing these blessed truths, or even being merely partakers of them. The secret of this joy is to be so filled with the grace of God shown to us as undeserving sinners, and take such pleasure in it, that our heart's response is to overflow in thanksgiving and praise and happiness, much like the sunflower's demeanor. This joy of the Lord is unaffected by circumstances or trials, because it is a result of drinking in the rays of God's love and grace. "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord" (John 20:20).

The story is told of a young boy who saw the missionary Adoniram Judson for the first time, and was so struck by the light of the joy of the Lord in His face, that he never could get away from its influence and later became the famous preacher Henry Clay Trumbull. That lighted countenance had changed his life!

"Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, … ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:7,8).