Jesus liked flowers. He told us to contemplate them as a remedy for worrying.

‘Why be anxious?' he said. 'Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these’.

So much of our anxiety comes from the fact that we are always striving to prove we have value. We struggle to earn the approval of others, or of God, or of ourselves.

But Jesus tells us the flowers should remind us we don’t need to bother. The deep root of our peace is to realise that God loves and values us infinitely without us having to do anything.

The flowers are beautiful without them having to toil and labour to be beautiful, and in just the same way we are beautiful in God’s eyes too. Jesus said: ‘If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is burned – how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!’ Next week (September 25th to 28th) St Albans Cathedral will be full of incredibly beautiful flowers. It is our ‘Flowers in Bloom’ festival, when we offer back to God, in floral displays and in music, some of the beauty he has lavished on us.

Come and contemplate them, and let your anxious worries go for a bit, as Jesus advised. Stop striving for once, and rest in the truth that to God you are much more beautiful even than the flowers – and always will be.

Even when the flowers are faded and gone.