“Those who use the things of the world should not become attached to them. For this world as we know it will soon pass away.”

Ours is a consumerism economy and culture.  When we stop consuming, the economy sputters.  What we consume though changes and we can see the shift in the lessening of materialistic desires and more spending and emphasis being placed on “experiences”. I’m going to take today (and the next two days after) to dive into this shift and see what we can learn.

Jim Coulter, the founder of the very successful investment company, Texas Pacific Group (TPG) mused on what makes “Experiences” a driving force in today’s economy and how we can think about them differently.  His first thought on experiences is that they have become more interesting and accessible because we can digitally pre-shop for them.  This makes a lot of sense to me as there are places in the world, or things we can do that are expensive and/or time-consuming that if we are going to spend the limited amount of time or money we have, we wouldn’t take a chance on them without being pretty sure they are going to be right for us. Being able to digitally  enter (nearly) into the experience online before committing to the travel, expense, time, etc is a great way for us to be thinking about how our consumers and customers are thinking.  It begs the question as to why aren’t we today providing a digital sample for everything that we offer?

We are not likely anytime soon to have an immersive virtual reality Bible that we can enter each day and experience the Word of God as if we were there with Him in first-person.  Or….will we?  It’s not out of the realm of possibility and in my mind’s eye I can almost feel the tingle of being one in the multitude listening to the Sermon on the Mount.  But, until then, God has given us the greatest example of His Kingdom to come in His Word and how we are to live Him out to others.  I have to be reminded myself that God’s Kingdom isn’t only about the Heaven of our future, but also about the lives of our present.  Let’s today to do our best to provide for others a sample of how God’s love can be experienced and seen.

Reference:  1 Corinthians 7:31 (New Living Translation)