Most of the time we call it "kudzu." Several individuals have tried to figure out ways to use kudzu, and have come up with some pretty ingenious ideas. Angora goats apparently love the stuff. In Greenville, Alabama, Ruth Duncan is known as the “Queen of Kudzu,” since she uses the rubbery vines to make more than 200 large baskets every year. Others have made paper from the leaves, jelly and syrup from the blossoms, and one guy has figured out to bale it and use it for hay. And there’s even a cookbook, containing nothing but recipes using kudzu!
It now covers about 7.4 million acres in the southern United States, with an additional 150,000 acres lost to it every year. Scientists say that it actually grows better here than in its native southeastern Asia. And while it has in some cases helped with soil erosion, if it is not controlled kudzu covers everything in its path, climbing tall trees and completely covering abandoned buildings. It is estimated that power companies spend $1.5 million every year to keep it off power poles and lines. But in spite of eradication measures, it's here to stay.
James Dickey wrote a poem entitled "Kudzu," in which he mused,
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house.
When you think about it, kudzu is a whole lot like sin. Sin has a way of creeping into and through our lives, covering everything it touches. Soon everything in our lives is affected--every relationship, every thought, every word. At first we are deceived that it really isn't all that bad, but it soon grows unchecked. Proverbs 20:9 reads, "Who can say, 'I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin?'"
And while some have found a few profitable uses for kudzu, there is nothing profitable about sin--at all. We're familiar with the words found in Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death."
How to eradicate kudzu is an ongoing problem. But getting rid of sin is as simple as the words in 1 John 1:9– “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.”
–Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com