Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire.....You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. James 5:1-6

In THE PILGRIM'S REGRESS, John is pulled out of his mundane existence by his search for an island of indescribable beauty. His journey leads him to discover the eternal, and with new eyes he is led back through the country he traveled as an unbeliever. The guide (the Holy Spirit?) accompanies him, and they soon come to Luxuria.

The place is definitely creeps one out.

"All seem to be suffering from some disease of a crumbling kind. It was doubtful whether all the life that pulsated in their bodies was their own."

John sees "a growth on a man's arm slowly detach itself under his eyes and become a fat reddish creature, separable from the parent body, though it was in no hurry to separate itself."

"In each form the anguished eyes were alive, sending to him unutterable messages from the central life which survived, self-conscious, though the self were but a fountain of vermin."

"One old cripple, whose face was all gone but the mouth and eyes, was sitting up to receive drink from a cup which a woman held to his lips. When he had as much as she thought was good, she snatched the cup from his hands and went to the next patient. She was dark but beautiful."

Informed by the guide that he is in Luxuria and that lingering is dangerous, John spots a young man who is in the early stages of destruction from the love of things. The witch is doing her charms on him with the cup, while he vacillates in the throes of temptation. Curiously, he is praying, while being tempted.

"Quick Lord! Before new scorpions bring
New venom - ere fiends blow the fire
A second time - quick, show me that sweet thing
Which, 'spite of all, more deeply I desire.'
 
All is hanging in the balance. The witch moves on to another waiting mouth with her cup, seemingly leaving him alone, but "at the first step she took, the young man gave a sob and his hands flew out and grabbed the cup and he buried his head in it: and when she took it from his lips clung to it as a drowning man to a piece of wood. But at last he sank down in the swamp with a groan. And the worms where there should have been fingers were unmistakable."

Suddenly John falls under the spell, and begins dreaming that the witch comes to him softly, holding out the cup.

He picks up his pace. So does she.

"Your island is not threatened," she lies. "I'm not saying the cup will quench your thirst for very long. But taste it none the less, for you are very thirsty."

John walks forward in silence.

The witch continues her "reasonable" temptation. John continues as before. She's not through yet.

"At least have one more taste of it, before you abandon it forever....taste once more and I will leave you."

John continues as before.

"Come," says the witch. "You are only wasting time. You know you will give in, in the end. Look ahead at the hard road and the grey sky. What other pleasures are there in sight?"

So she accompanied him for a long way, till the weariness of her importunity tempted him far more than any positive desire. To occupy his mind, John makes up some verses that reflect on what he has learned. "The witch's wine, though promising nothing seems, to promise best - the unrelished anodyne (something that soothes, comforts, or relaxes).

Talk about dodging a bullet. "By the time he had reached the word anodyne the witch was gone. But he had never in his life felt more weary, and for a  while the purpose of his pilgrimage woke no desire in him."

And earth has nothing I desire besides you. Psalm 73:25

Lord, get us to this one thing, this desire for you, and keep us there. Amen.