Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”

July 8th, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

Eternity, to Old Testament people, was not timelessness or absence of time, but rather the extension of time, endless time. It was the idea that time went beyond past and future, as far back and as far forward as one could imagine. Even though Solomon was talking about temporal life, he recognized that God had placed this sense of eternity within the heart of every person. It is the sense that there is something beyond us, beyond just life “under the sun.”

We all desire to know the eternal significance of what we do. And this God-given desire to understand is the drive behind all science, philosophy, and human knowledge. But none of us can fully grasp or understand all that God has done or is doing. Oxford professor C. S. Lewis said, “Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home.”

Everyone has experienced this hard-wired desire or longing for home, which is a critical part of God’s plan for every soul. There is a vacuum in the life of every man and woman who has not been born again. Pascal, the 17th-century, French mathematician, said:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. (Pascal, Pensees #425)

“Thank You, LORD, that You have not left any person without knowledge. Thank You, LORD, that You desire to use us to point others to You as the only One who can fill this void.”