TODAY THE WORDS are WHERE IS MY WATERMELON? It’s that time of year for all of us southern water melon eaters to get excited and ready to indulge in this year’s crop of mouth watering watermelons grown locally. The picture I have displayed above is a guide to how to pick out the best watermelon and in all of my years of eating my weight in the sweet, cooling, refreshing watermelon; I never knew all of these tips to find the perfect watermelon. I never knew anything other than a good thump and if it had a thud, it was ready. Now, at my age and thinking I was a watermelon connoisseur, I find myself an amateur at best. I think I may have written a childhood memory before but since I am writing about my watermelon eating compulsion I will tell you how it started. My Mother’s Father was a Head Guard at a prison camp and had privy to the field’s yield and the prisoners grew watermelons along with other produce. Granddaddy would get the trustees to bring my cousin and I watermelons and Granddaddy would take his big knife and cut each one of us a half watermelon and let us go at it. We ate the “heart” first but we loved it to the edge and the rind was the only evidence of our gluttony. Even those got processed and cooked down with sugar into watermelon preserves. I guess you could say we were into “recycling” as we recycled every bit of that watermelon and there was no waste other than the seeds which we would, without fear of looking uncouth, we would spit them. Those were the days and I can tell you I hardly ever put a piece of watermelon when those memories don’t rush in my mind as the watermelon rushes in my mouth. I saw an article the other day with the “health” benefits of watermelon and I smiled. It didn’t occur to me while I was on the porch of my Granddaddy’s; I was on my way to healthy eating. Now for a deeper thought since I have dived into a pile of memories…..Anything and everything we do in our lives, both good and bad, have a profound effect on our lives. There is no such thing as trivial; we use that word too freely. Each grain of sand means huge impact on the entire beach and ocean. If you are thinking why, then I say, feel your feet in the water at the edge of the ocean and feel the change when the tide takes away some of the sand beneath your feet. It makes a hole and you feel unsteady and move to an area to gain your stance, right? As each grain of sand is important to the ocean; each of us is important to God. You count; I count; and everyone else counts in God’s ocean of His Children. Now, where is my watermelon?
DAILY FEATURED BIBLE VERSE:
James 5:7 ESV
Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains
(c) copyright 2014 Arline Lott Miller. The material here copyrighted, use only by permission.
