Protect me from what I want

This time last week I was spending the night in london. 

This was a trip I had been looking forward to as I really didn’t go anywhere over the summer holidays.  It was something I wanted! One night in a suite at Claridges  - no expense spared, airport transfers, afternoon tea, theatre tickets, champagne  Lifted and laid and living like a king!  Yet the 48 hours that followed challenged me to my very core.  The difference between what I want and what I need. 

Somewhere between the thrill and the excitement, the luxury and the champagne I had a feeling that shocked me to my very core - In what should have been a comfortable if not luxurious experience I was feeling very uncomfortable.  In the champagne bubbles I saw that here I was worshiping at the alter of luxury and decadence, now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with the odd treat, but this was more than a treat, this was my trying to find happiness in luxury - struck to the core once again with the words of Jesus telling me that He had come (not Claridges) so I could have fullness of life!

What was I doing ... I was in need of a reality check.

The following day this was articulated further as I visited an exhibition at the V&A on Postmodernism (which i strongly recommend) and gazed on an piece of art by Jenny Holzer - Protect Me From What I Want - when we pursue what we want rather than what we need we can hardly complain when we end up with a world against which the Occupy movement is arguing against.  A world in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the squeezed middle feel the pinch further.  

The experience captured by Martin Amis when he commented ‘money doesn’t mind, if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength.  It’s a fiction, an addiction and a tacit conspiracy’.  The trip left me re-examining how I spend my money and what I do with my money ....