I recently returned from vacation down south and as I was riding, I was once again struck sad that Kudzu is taking over everything. The further south I traveled, the more often I saw it along the roadside. I remember that many years ago, I had to go clear to the southeastern part of Kentucky to see it and now I noticed it as far north as southern Indiana. It engulfs everything it comes near — hillsides, trees, utility poles, fences. I even saw it beginning to travel across power lines that ran overhead. In places where people have tried to eradicate it, the landscape is bare down to the earth because to kill the Kudzu is to kill anything living that it has engulfed.
I looked up where Kudzu originated and learned from wikipedia that “Kudzu was intentionally introduced to North America by the Soil Erosion Service and Civilian Conservation Corp in 1876 for the purpose of controlling soil erosion in Pennsylvania.” By now, you’re thinking (if you’ve read this far), what’s the point—another tirade against invasive species. No, that’s not my point. My mind went an entirely different direction.
Kudzu is like sin in our lives. That’s where my mind went. Some well-meaning person back in the late 1800s saw or heard about Kudzu and thought “what a great idea. Let’s bring it to the U.S. to help control erosion.” That person had absolutely no idea what he was starting. Something seems like a good idea at the time, but sin isn’t ever good, and left unchecked it takes over. When I’m sin-filled, I may still look like me, but the sin covers everything. It wraps me up. It covers me over. It begins to smother who I really am to the point where I’m not even visible any more. It’s just the shape of me. Sometimes, sin gets to the point where it kills or disfigures.
Fortunately if I let God be my Master Gardener, He knows how to eradicate sin without killing me in the process. When I cry out to Him and confess my sin, he eradicates it. He forgets it. It never existed in His mind. Even though I may carry scars and definitely have to deal with any consequences, I’m me again. Don’t we serve a wonderful God? I bet the fellow who introduced Kudzu wishes it were that easily eradicated.
Driving in to work this morning, I began to contemplate the clouds. I was doing the same thing I do every weekday morning (although at a different time) along with the same other commuters (although different people and vehicles). The clouds were the same as most clouds I’ve seen (although they were more numerous and moving faster). I began to think that while much of life is the same, it’s always different. The clouds showed me that while I was looking them from one perspective, others would have a completely different perspective. If someone were driving from the East side of Indianapolis, or the North or the South, the clouds would look different. Someone in an airplane flying through or above those clouds would experience them in a completely different way from the way I saw them. 
