Dear Cobham Park Church Family,
Don’t have a Kudzu Christmas! Since you probably have no idea what I mean by that, I’ll first need to give some Kudzu background before getting to the Christmas part…
Kudzu is an invasive vine that grows up to a foot a day and covers innumerable acres of this country (estimates range from hundreds of thousands to nine million). Native to Japan, Kudzu made its debut here in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Its fast growth and fragrant blooms caught the attention of gardeners, and it was soon a popular porch plant. In the deep South, Kudzu also showed great promise in battling soil erosion, so the Conservation Corps spread it extensively in the 1930’s. Farmers were paid up to $8 an acre to plant Kudzu in their fields.
What came of all this? To put it simply, Kudzu took over. It climbed everything that wasn’t moving, covering hillsides, trees, barns, and power lines. It killed forests by blocking out the sun. Farmers couldn’t bale Kudzu because its vines tangled their machinery. Even chemical warfare couldn’t stop this green menace. Killing Kudzu required years of repeated herbicide application, and by that time, it had already spread somewhere else. James Dickey once wrote of Kudzu, “In Georgia, the legend says that you must close your windows at night to keep it out of the house.”
This brings me to Christmas. We are surrounded by Christmas trappings: decorations by the boxful, endless to-do lists, schedule-stuffing celebrations, family rituals, and the never-ending quest for perfect gifts. These Christmas “extras” are popular and pervasive. They promise to bring some holiday cheer to our dreary world. But, like Kudzu, they quickly take over. Things like shopping, sleigh bells, and sappy songs can actually become Christmas for many people. Christ ends up being covered over by well-meaning Christmas clutter—even in His church!
This December, feel free to enjoy all the trappings of Christmas—but don’t let them take over your heart and mind. We may need to prune back our Christmas Kudzu enough for Jesus to shine through! “His life is the light that shines in the darkness—and the darkness can never extinguish it (John 1:5, The Living Bible).”
In His Love,
Pastor Keith
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