“We spend way too much time worrying about things that are fleeting — vapor — that in the grand scheme of eternity mean nothing.”
Christine Caine
Read that statement again. It’s true, isn’t it? Someone says something that hurts your feelings? Vapor. You don’t get the job or promotion you wanted? Vapor. It rains during your entire vacation? Vapor.
My mother-in-law worried over the fact that no one gave a boutonniere to her husband, who was performing our wedding ceremony. Till the day she died. Which was only eight months later, so … definitely vapor.
Not because those things don’t matter in the moment. Of course they do, and some things we care about deeply because they affect the people we love, like that boutonniere. But these things don’t last. They don’t carry eternal weight. Some of those things, like that boutonniere, can’t last more than a week. Others don’t last more than a day. Because they are so fleeting, we can’t let them define who we are or who God is.
And yet, for so long, I lived as if they did define me.
The Weight We Give to What Won’t Last
I used to place so much importance on my emotions. How I felt about something. How someone made me feel. How a situation felt in the moment.
If it felt big, I treated it as big. If it felt overwhelming, I treated it as truth.
Then I heard someone say, “Emotions are energy in motion.” That’s a poetic way of saying: emotions are vapor. They’re here, and then – poof! – they’re gone again, if we let them keep moving on.
A recent sleep meditation I listened to echoed the same idea — that emotional reality is not the ultimate reality. It’s a hard habit to break. It’s easier to believe that whatever I feel is the truest thing about my life. But I’m learning.
Slowly. Gently. With God’s patient leading.
Psalm 34 and the Practice of Turning
This morning, I sat with Psalm 34:13–14:
Keep your tongue from evil
And your lips from speaking deceit.
Turn from evil and do good
Seek peace and pursue it.
There’s movement in these verses. A turning. Reorienting. Shifting of focus. This isn’t emotion. It’s not energy in motion. It’s your conscious will in motion. Your response to God’s invitation to:
“Let go of what is fleeting. Turn toward what is eternal.”
Don’t let the emotional storms lead you. Or the disappointments. Not even the small offenses or oversights that feel big in the moment.
Let peace guide you. Goodness. Truth. People. God’s love.
These are eternal. They are what matter.
Ecclesiastes and the Ache to Control
Ecclesiastes calls everything “hevel” — vapor, smoke, or breath. The Bible Project describes it as something you can see but can’t grasp. You can reach for it, but you can’t catch it. Your hand closes on nothing.
It reminded me of Celebrate Recovery’s first principle:
We spend so much of our lives trying to control situations, outcomes, and even other people. We try to manage everything we fear. Fix everything that hurts.
But it’s all chasing after the wind.
Ecclesiastes doesn’t shame us for this impulse. It simply exposes the futility of it. This book invites us to stop grasping at vapor and instead open our hands to God.
Learning to Live From the Eternal
I’m learning — slowly and imperfectly — that emotional healing isn’t about shutting down feelings. It’s about right-sizing them.
It’s about remembering:
- Emotions are real, but they are not the most important thing.
- Circumstances matter, but they don’t last forever.
- God and people are the only things that are eternal.
Everything else is vapor.
And when the vapor clears, what remains is the steady, unchanging presence of God — inviting us to seek peace, pursue good, and live from a deeper reality than what we feel in the moment.
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