*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>***
I also think of those who attended Gatsby's parties and the revealing nature and attitude of people surrounded with a luxurious lifestyle---one filled with clothes, catering, and carelessness. A woman at the party, Lucille, says, "I like to come...I never care what I do, so I always have a good time" (43). Luxury, for them, was an opulent yardstick measuring the depth of what was meaningful in life.
Obviously my life is so far removed from such a world, a world filled with so many ostentatious representations of luxury. However, I am grateful because I do have luxuries...luxuries money cannot buy.
Often times, luxuries are things we never saw as such until they are taken away or they exist no longer. We take for granted basic necessities which for others may, indeed, be considered a luxury, a basic comfort that goes beyond sheer delicacy. There are many treasures in our daily life that can give comfort and joy if we invest into life's simpler pleasures and take notice of the luxury we find, for example, in laughter, friends, or even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Luxury isn't bad in and of itself, but one needs to consider how the love of the pursuit of material things--of indulging in sumptuous living, brings with it the potential of causing cracks in a person's character. Seeing as you need money to purchase such luxurious possessions, it's not intrinsically the money that is evil, but the love of money that can make one stumble. (I Timothy 6:10) This desire for an excessive connection to material things above all else, and above all others, can reveal where a person's treasures really are housed.
A young student had a ragged-edge, and dirt-laden pillow with him and he was sitting with it in the school hallway. Later, a caring, and astute teacher remarked to a friend of his, "That's not his pillow is it?" "No," the friend said, "I brought a pillow from home because he doesn't have one."
The most elemental human need is to be comforted from emotional, mental, and physical pain. This cannot be satiated by a rich and empty desire to accumulate things of luxury, but by an abundance of sacrificial acts of love...by providing, perhaps, the promise and peace of a pillow.