The Lesson of Kudzu

When I went to visit my parents in South Carolina, I noticed a strange vine growing up and over the tops of trees, houses, fences and anything else it could grow on top of. My Dad who knew a lot about botany, told me it was a plant called Kudzu that came from Japan and had been planted in areas that had trouble with erosion. It has been planted along the and overpowers everything quickly. Kudzu is very oppressive stuff!  It steals the light of the sun from everything! It destroys everything it it path. I saw many broken down shacks where it had grown over the tops of, covered and destroyed.

The thing is that Kudzu seemed like a good idea to solve a problem and make agricultural work easier, but it is a monster in disguise, a wolf in sheep's clothing!  Many, many things in life are like the Kudzu plant. I often have had grand ideas to do something that seem so perfect and when all was said and done, they turned into dragging doldrums.

So much in this world is full of hype! So many things and ideas are pushed at us. We fall prey to the latest rage, fads and the desire to be 'with it'!  The outtake many times on following what goes on around us and not our heart, in the end, oppresses us. All that we experience in life can be evaluated by the peace in our heart.

7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil 4:17

The mind in the above verse is the intellect. Understanding is what we do with our minds.  God's peace goes way above and beyond all that we think. Sometimes our minds seem so over-jammed  with what we perceive is going on around us and what we have to do, it is hard to get up and out from under all that pressure.  We just have to let go  and let God's peace get us up. That is when we become ready to rock and roll!

The peace of God is so real.  We don't just act peaceful, doing peaceful things, we are inwardly peaceful. God loves us even in our scrambled yucky moments.  He doesn't want anything stealing the light  of his son away from us or have anything overpower us. He wants us to live free. Sometimes we just need to chill and let God's light warm us and let him guard us from something overshadowing our peacefulness!