About a century ago, people started planting a fast-growing vine called kudzu across the South. It was beautiful, it grew quickly, and it helped stop erosion. It worked a little too well. Nobody asked the second question: what stops the vine? Kudzu doesn't just grow — it forks. One shoot becomes two. Two become eight. Eight become a hundred. Before long, the barn disappears. The telephone pole disappears. Drive through the Deep South in July and whole hillsides look like something out of a horror show, buried under green.

Three thousand years before kudzu ever covered a hillside, a Hebrew poet reached for a rare word to describe what was happening inside his own mind — a word carrying the idea of thoughts that divide, branch, and multiply. He wasn't simply saying, "I've got a lot on my mind." He was describing something that multiplies inside a person: one thought becomes two, two become eight, eight become a hundred, until you can no longer see the original problem underneath everything your mind has grown around it. It's 3:17 in the morning. Your body is in bed, but your mind has left the building. The psalmist didn't have a smartphone or social media, and his mind was still eating him alive. But watch what he says next: he does not say his comfort arrived once the thoughts disappeared. He says God's comfort met him in the middle of the multitude, while the branches were still there.