Created for Eternity

Created for Eternity

Ecclesiastes 3:11 “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also he has put eternity in their hearts…”

In the deepest part of the human condition lies a longing for what life was like before the fall in the Garden of Eden. We long for joy, happiness, meaning and ultimately fellowship with God. St. Augustine famously wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” It is the notion of a God-shaped void in the heart of mankind that can only be filled with God. The void can be stuffed with temporary, fleeting pleasures but like the morning dew it soon disappears. A temporary pleasure can never satisfy an eternal longing.

The Bible pictures the human soul groaning for more than can be found in this world. King Solomon, the wisest and richest man who ever lived, reached the end of his goals and said all is vanity.

Every culture has as part of their DNA a longing to know God. The ancient Chinese believed that life continued after death. People believed they would do the things in the afterlife that they had done in this life. Tombs were arranged with the objects that people would need in the afterlife — weapons, ritual vessels and personal ornaments. They believed there was an important link between the living and the dead. They believed deceased ancestors lived in the spirit world with the gods and they had the ability to influence the gods to bring good or bad luck to the people on earth; the people on earth could make offerings and hold ceremonies for their ancestors, to persuade them to bring good luck.

The Egyptians provided their dead with written instructions, including advice on how to survive the hazardous journey after death and guidebooks to the afterworld. The afterlife took many forms but was often pictured as a comfortable existence in a luxuriant realm of rivers, fields, and islands in the heavens. The largest Pyramid in Egypt took thousands of men and 20 years to build and belonged to the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu. Why did Khufu put such a huge effort into building himself a tomb? The Egyptians so believed in life after death they made preparations while they were still alive. You see God placed eternity in their hearts.

God has set eternity in the heart of man. Regardless of where you’re born, what culture, what country, or what education you’ve received; something in the heart of mankind knows there is a purpose for life. Understanding that purpose is a different story. It has been said, “the greatest days of a person’s life is the day you were born and day you realize why you were born.” No one wants to get to the end of their life and die full of regrets about what they could have done or should have done.

God has set eternity in the human heart. Eternity is an incredible concept! It is so vast that the human mind cannot grasp it. God is eternal with neither beginning nor end. Man has a definite beginning but no end. Man will live forever with God in eternal glory or apart from God in eternal darkness. When you trust Jesus Christ, you become a part of eternity. To reject Him is to miss the very purpose for which we were created. Jesus, God’s Son, came to earth to reveal eternity and He died to give us eternal life.

God has placed eternity in the human heart therefore you can never be content in this world. The great struggle of life is many people fail to realize that their longing and emptiness is not a relational, physical or cultural issue but a spiritual issue. Solomon says, fulfillment must come from a source outside one’s self and beyond this world. It was not until Solomon became an old man that he finally realized that he was created for eternity. He finally understood that life without God is vanity and the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep his commandments. What Solomon tried in vain to fill is woven into the fabric of human existence. God has wired us to be dissatisfied with life on the surface and to have a deep, inner craving for the eternal. We’re designed by God to know that there’s something more than this brief physical life.

Eternity becomes for us either our greatest delight or our greatest dread. It is our greatest possible delight because we can spend eternity in the perfect new universe that God will create. However, eternity can be our greatest dread because without Christ eternal separation from God is the reality. The fact is every person will live forever because God has set eternity in our heart. The issue is where will we spend eternity? The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” By trusting the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary and accepting Him as Lord and Savior, heaven is the eternal destiny for all who believe. Call on Christ today. He created you to spend eternity with Him.

Source: https://www.mtairynews.com/opinion/92241/made-for-eternity