Flowers Inspire Wonder
Although professing atheists claim that living things only appear to have been designed, people who do not filter their observations through that opinion can easily see that living things were not only designed, but designed by our Creator (Rom. 1:18-23). I will go further: I believe part of his purpose was for our pleasure — and meet our needs. They are like living jewels with an incredible array of colors, but they fade away when their time is done (Isaiah 40:8). One does not have to be a botanist to appreciate them.
Pink peonies, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen, modified at PhotoFunia |
To see why “flowering” is such an unbelievably complex system, where God put all the working parts in place from the beginning, consider the apple tree. The flowers come in clusters of soft pink blossoms, called inflorescences. Within each flower are organs called stamens that produce pollen, which then makes male sperm. Each flower also contains one (or more) female-producing part, referred to as the carpel, which has a slender tube leading down to an egg-filled ovary within the flower’s base. We don’t usually think of flowers’ reproduction as being as complicated as that of the birds and the bees, but the egg and pollen—containing the sperm—must come into contact to produce any offspring (in this case, an apple).
You can read the entire article or listen to the audio by planting yourself at "Flowers—Not Just a Pretty Face." Bonus fun: In the flower picture above, see the face in the flower at the far right. If you do, it's pareidolia. However, I influenced you on what to see.