Looks good, feels good, ends badly

Opportunities for pleasure seem to be all around us, promising happiness and deliverance from boredom.

But invariably these are just opportunities for greater enslavement and for estrangement from true happiness and eternal excitement.

That is the warning of today's first reading (1 John 2:12-17).

Do not love the world
or the things of the world.

If anyone loves the world,
the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world,
sensual lust,
enticement for the eyes,
and a pretentious life,
is not from the Father
but is from the world.

Yet the world and its enticement
are passing away.

But whoever does the will of God
remains forever.

By the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, may we pull away from the traps of this world and persevere in the good things that are true and everlasting.