O Emmanuel

We wind up at the final, seventh tree and take note of its sign:  “O Emmanuel!  Come, make us whole, Lord our God.”  Ah!  Look down, Sisters…  This is really a vining plant – sending out curly tendrils, like runners along the ground.  Its stem is a long, trailing vine, highly branched.  Its leaves are lobed.  The yellow, star-shaped flowers came and went – blooming for only one day.  And the bees dashed, taking their nectar and pollen.

A member of the gourd family, the fruit is very large and round with a firm, smooth rind, typically green; and its flesh a reddish-pink; with flat, oval, black seeds throughout.  Watermelons contain 92 percent water – the highest of any fruit.  So for early explorers, watermelons were handy canteens.

Originating from Africa, watermelon cultivation has a long history across the globe.  Japanese farmers perfected a technique for growing square watermelons in glass boxes, where the fruit naturally assumes the shape of the receptacle.

Whichever way you slice it, novelist Mark Twain wrote this:  “Watermelon is the chief of this world’s luxuries, king, by the grace of God, over all the fruits of the earth.  When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.  It was not a watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented.”

O expected Emmanuel, the watermelon vine and fruit personify you.  In fact at full-term gestation, you are now the size of a watermelon!  Two days away from your appearance on the earth’s stage – our Advent joy – you will not be overdue…  Incredibly, you prostrate your divinity along the ground; your star-shaped grace will flower on Christmas Day.  And one day, the seeds of your Word will spew across the globe.

O God with Us!  Come, make us whole, Lord our God.  Place the peoples and events of this time and space in the palm of the Father’s hands – Oh, that each of these would assume the shape of his design…  Come, Jesus, nourish us luxuriously with your incarnation and hydrate our souls with your sweet, living water.  Let us be canteens!