The Deadly Allurement of the World

Sadhu Sundar Singh tells the following story:

At the foot of the Kaylass Mountains, there is a district which is full of sweet scented flowers. Once I had to walk through an area which contained a garden of these flowers several miles long. The beauty and fragrance of the flowers gave me great pleasure.

 Just then a man came out of the jungle and said in great haste, “You must not stand here; this is a place of great danger; many have died here.” I was taken by surprise and asked him. “Is this place poisonous, or are there poisonous creatures to be found here?”

 The answer he gave me was full of meaning. “I don’t know anything about that”, he said, “but if you take in the scent of these flowers for a little while, sleep will overpower you. And once asleep, there is no waking you. Some have been known to sleep this way for ten to twelve days, and this ends in death. Since I live in the forest nearby, I endeavour to let people know about the danger of these flowers.”

When I heard this, I thought as follows:

 This flower cannot hurt of itself, but when its aroma is inhaled, there is no longer any desire for food or anything else.

 God wishes us to use the world and its blessings around us for our good, but if we allow these things to draw us aside and to allure and stupefy us, we will suffer great spiritual loss. Not only so, we will be robbed of the desire for spiritual sustenance. The lust of money and other things will result in death.

Mark 4:18,19   And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who hear the word, and the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful.