IN LONDON for a couple of days this summer, I was struck again by the vastness of the place. It's like 50 cities in one. A million people in Westminster alone. Just about every ethnic group I can imagine. Vertiginous wealth and profound poverty within spitting distance of each other.

In the baking sun, Oxford Street was a mass of hot humanity scurrying from shrine to shrine in the devotions of the religion of the West: consumerism (almost definitely the fastest growing religion in the world).

But what satisfaction is there in this frantic faith? Beyond McDonalds "golden arches" there are only dying rainforests. Coca-Cola is not really "the real thing" and people know it.

On this sweltering summer's day (rare, this year!) people were thirsty. But it didn't matter - as long as you had enough cash. The sellers of bottled water were doing very well that day (at £2 or £3 a bottle).

But what about that other thirst? The deeper thirst - for meaning, for forgiveness, for purpose? Does consumerism satisfy?

And even if it does dull the thirstiness of the rich, what about those who can't afford Oxford Street's bottled water? What about the have-nots? Just around the corner from Oxford Circus, the Jesus Fellowship is about to open its third Jesus Centre. It aims to play its part in meeting the needs people have in the centre of our capital: material and spiritual needs.

The other day someone remarked to me "There are no poor people in Westminster". Wrong, actually. There are lots when you look beyond the bright lights and the bottled water. Five Westminster wards are in the ten per cent most deprived wards in the country. According to London Jesus Centre manager, Rob Bentley, "on an average night there are as many rough sleepers in Westminster as in the rest of the UK put together".

But it's not only the obvious kinds of poverty - there are also many with an aching thirst for reality: what Rob calls "materially rich people who are also in great spiritual need and facing problems of a different kind".

It all reminds me of something Jesus said: "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

London Jesus Centre aims to offer this life-giving water - free of charge.

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