Gladiator v. Buzz Lightyear

Ecc 3:11
“He has made everything beautiful in it’s time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

I’m a part of a small group of men who fasts together each week and meets for a time of discussion and prayer. Yesterday, we began to talk about the nature of eternity and how we view it.

In a 40 day fast, 40 days can feel like eternity. It seems to go on forever....and yet once a 40 day fast is over, eternity doesn’t really enter the picture. Consumed with our immediate needs and wants, eternity is an after-event, or better stated, an after-thought. We live our lives in a detached mode, as if eternity is an addendum to history rather than and over arching reality.

There are essentially two views of eternity, summed up thusly:

“Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity.”
Maximus
Gladiator

“To infinity, and beyond!”
Buzz Lightyear
Toy Story

Poor Buzz Lightyear. He was convinced infinity was a place yet to be realized. It was a goal to look towards, albeit unachievable without a personal jetpack and nifty snap-out wings on your back. His thinking perfectly represented most peoples’ thinking - that eternity was far off, and getting there was quite a trip. He didn’t consider that the nature of infinity demands that it extends both forward and backwards. He was living in eternity all along.

In the movie Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus has the right idea. The war we fight today matters forever. The decisions we make about where to point our arrows, how to protect ourselves, the words we use and the words we keep to ourselves will have impact today and forever, because today is a parenthetical section of eternity.

Eternity is not the after-event.   Like the Kingdom of God, it is the now and the not yet.

These 40 days matter far beyond the six weeks that contain them on the calendar. You are honing your heart and shaping your mind in ways that will serve you and the Kingdom of God 10,000 years from today.

Ephesian 1:10 describes a day when Christ will bring all things together in heaven and on earth.

Your wristwatch and your eternal rewards.

Your deeds today and your experience of that day.

We might want to consider this today in how we deal with people and carry our heart. We will all live with the results for a long, long time.