Tiny Watermelons
Nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love.
Last spring, I received a packet of seeds for yellow dwarf watermelons by accident. Watermelon had not been on my agenda to grow in my garden given the limited amount of space that I have, but I was intrigued. I turned to the internet for ideas. After a few gardening articles and videos, I concluded that one could grow watermelons in grow bags and encourage them to grow up a trellis.
After purchasing a couple of red dwarf watermelon seedlings from the store, I prepared two grow bags to place in the back garden enclosure. One bag would hold the seedlings. I would plant a few yellow watermelon seeds in the other. I took bamboo tomato stakes and created two teepee trellises in the bags and filled them with potting soil. After setting them up, I planted the seedlings and seeds, watered, and began the process.
The early results were encouraging. The seedlings took root and started growing vines rather quickly. The seeds germinated and started trying to catch up. Since the grow bags were in the back garden, however, I did not have built-in irrigation for them. I was only able to water them twice a week when I visited the garden.
As the summer took hold, the vines were flowering. Eventually I began to see small watermelons on the vines. I had learned from past experiments with grow bags that feeding the plants is even more important in that environment, so I tried to keep up with frequent liquid organic fertilizer. As the fruit started to grow, I hung support mesh netting around them to keep them from pulling off the vine as they grew larger. I was very optimistic!
As the summer progressed, I began to encounter a few obstacles to success in the watermelon patch. First, we had a stretch of high heat with no rain this summer. Watering plants in grow bags twice a week was not enough under those circumstances. The lack of water stressed the plants. Second, whenever one of the vines grew up against or through the fence, the deer promptly found the vines and ate them. Finally, my efforts to feed the plants were not consistent. Again, being out in the garden only twice a week limited the amount of feeding possible and I missed some opportunities to be consistent about fertilizing. Despite all of these obstacles, the plants stayed alive all summer and grew fruit.
As the summer came to an end, it appeared that we had four watermelons to pick. One day, I harvested the watermelons and brought them home. I was very excited to cut them open and see how they tasted!
The really funny part was that the watermelons never really grew very large. The dwarf varieties I had planted were already intended to grow smaller watermelons, perhaps 4-6 inches in diameter. The obstacles I had encountered, however, had inhibited the growth of the fruit. They were tiny! The good news is that, when I cut them open and started eating, they tasted like normal watermelons. They were good. In fact, they were sweet and great tasting!
I was recently sharing the story of the tiny watermelons at a gathering with a group of men. After I shared the pictures above, we all enjoyed a laugh at the expense of my tiny watermelons. A friend of mine, who I will call “Mr. Johnson” for the sake of anonymity, challenged me to write an Abound in Hope post about the tiny watermelons. Walking out, I had no idea what that post might look like. But I decided the next morning to start writing and see what started to develop.
The first draft ended up in the trash. Another week went by with no inspiration. At this point, we were deep into Advent. Perhaps looking back over my Advent posts over the past couple of years would provide a spark.
My Advent post in 2022 was about “Preparing the Soil.” The first Advent post in 2023 was about “Annual Cycle” and how everything has a season. In “Faith Not Feelings,” I renewed the call to examine ourselves spiritually and to take concrete steps in the coming year to improve our spiritual life. The final post of Advent 2023 was about “The game of life.” I picked up a thread from the posts and began writing again.
After finishing another draft, I shared the post with my wife. By way of background, I always share my draft posts with my wife. Not only is she an excellent proofreader, but she is also an excellent sounding board. She reads with an ear for the Holy Spirit and lets me know who is talking—the Holy Spirit or Eric. After she commented on draft number two, it also ended up in the trash. But she spoke to me in the Holy Spirit and asked me why I had not written about a topic that I had recently included in a talk. I set off in that direction.
A long time ago I heard someone explain the state of souls in heaven. In heaven, everyone’s vessel will be full.1 We will be completely full of the love of God. We will be in complete union with God and the Body of Christ. The difference, however, will be the capacity of each vessel.
The size of our spirit’s capacity for God is fixed at death. Once a person makes it to heaven, their vessel can grow no larger. Some people in heaven will have a vessel with the capacity of a thimble. Others, a coffee cup. Others, a swimming pool. Some, the entire ocean!2 Yet, regardless of the size of their vessel, each soul will be perfectly content, perfectly happy and completely in union with God because they will be full.
It is during this life, however, that we have the opportunity to incease the size of our vessel. The thing that increases the size of our vessel is the love of God. First and foremost, this is culivated by our personal prayer life and our reception of the Sacraments (such as Holy Communion) with devotion. Our love for God should be the animating principle of our soul. It is through daily prayer that we dispose ourselves to receive this love.
We must also take this love we receive in our daily prayer into our circumstances in life. We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. God the Father explained to St. Catherine of Sienna how the act of loving our neighbor is actually an act of loving God:
“You cannot give me the kind of love I ask of you. This is why I have put you among your neighbors: so that you can do for them what you cannot do for me–that is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourself. And whatever you do for them I will consider done for me.”
What does any of this have to do with tiny watermelons?
The tiny watermelons that I grew turned into real watermelons. They were sweet. They tasted like watermelons. The volume of their interior fruit was tiny, but it was authentic. The small size of the watermelons was due to a variety of circumstances. Drought. Deer eating vines. Lack of fertilizer. Inadequate soil. Nevertheless, despite all of these these obstacles the plants produced authentic fruit.
The Christian spiritual life is not easy. The growing conditions for our souls are not ideal. We live in a world that is full of evil and focused on sin. Original sin pulls at us constantly to do that which we do not wish to do.3 We go through periods of spiritual dryness and drought. Prayer requires effort and is a battle.4
Despite all these negative variables, Jesus is Lord! Jesus has overcome the world. He knows the circumstances of your life—the drought, the lack of fertilizer, the deer eating your vines, the poor soil you find yourself in. That does not matter to Jesus. By the grace of God you can become good fruit in the Kingdom of God right where you are planted.
Your love of God and love of neighbor are the keys to expanding the capacity of your vessel to be filled with God in this life and in heaven. The people and circumstances that God has placed in your life today are opportunities to love God. There is no need to run around searching for a different place to serve the Lord. He has given you ample opportunities today to show Him how much you love Him.
May the Lord Jesus grant you His presence this Christmas. Amen.
“Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love.”
St. Therese of Lisieux
Eric A. Welter is an employment lawyer and trial attorney with a long-time devotion to intercessory prayer. He is a Catholic Christian who has been involved with intercessory and healing prayer ministry for over twenty years. The Abound in Hope Ministry website is https://www.aboundinhope.org/ministry.
The mission of the Abound in Hope Ministry is to show men and women how much God loves them and to increase that love in their hearts.
Eric’s books on prayer are available in paperback or e-book format on amazon.com.
Effective Intercession for Our Loved Ones: Power Tools for Prayer.
(Available on amazon.com in paperback or Kindle.)
Effective Intercession for Ourselves: “Power Tools” for Prayer (Part Two). (Available on amazon.com in paperback or Kindle.)
See The Dialogue of St. Catherine Of Siena.
Put another way, some people in heaven will be tiny dwarf watermelons; others will be large watermelons. But they will all be good fruit.