Eternalizing

I've spent part of the week watching soccer matches. Last night's was particularly exciting, having gone into double overtime. The fans from both schools whipped themselves into a pretty intense frenzy. All of us, including me, acted for the moment as if life itself depended on the outcome. Afterwards I imagine most of us sat back and thought, "Well that was exciting. But it is a game, after all, and they are just kids."

It's pretty normal to get excited about events, people, and circumstances. Sometimes, however I think all of us can allow such things to have more weight than they actually do. Henri Nouwen, a great leader in Christian spiritual formation, regarded this as "eternalizing," especially when we allow people, events, and things to let us sink into negativity. Nouwen said, "Small, seemingly innocent events keep telling us how easily we eternalize ourselves and our world. It takes only a hostile word to make us feel sad and lonely. It takes only a rejecting gesture to plunge us into self-complaint. It takes only a substantial failure in our work to lead us into a self-destructive depression." (Henri Nouwen in Reaching Out.)

I'm afraid that when we eternalize people, events, and circumstances around us, we lose complete perspective. Our favorite team's performance makes our day or breaks it. As Jesus-followers our outlook rises or falls depending on whether or not we liked the music in worship, whether or not the message in worship moved us personally, or whether or not the right people said the right things to us. All of this bleeds energy of the things that really do matter eternally - Loving God and loving each other as Jesus has loved us.

Sometimes I think we just need some healthy distance from the world of immediacy around us. This doesn't mean detachment or apathy. This just involves a realization that eternalizing puts yet another barrier between us and God, and between us and the fulfillment of what God has called us to be and to do. Nouwen says, "This lack of distance, which excludes the humor in life, can create a suffocating depression which prevents us from living our heads above the horizon of our own limited existence."

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.