Jump Start # 349

Ecclesiastes 3:11 “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.”

  Solomon who wrote this is discussing God’s relationship with man and how God made man. The expression, “He has also set eternity in their heart,” is what I want to focus upon today. Eternity in our hearts. What a wonderful expression.

  There is something within us that knows that there is something out there—and I’m not talking about aliens, but God. Nearly every civilization struggled with this but understood that some form of God was out there. This is why we find examples of people worshipping the sun or a river or in the Old Testament, the god Baal. It was Freud who claimed that man invented God, like a mental crutch, to help carry us through. But his theories don’t stand. As man advanced and technology developed, and life shifted from survival and rural, to urban and productivity, the inner thought of God has always been there. You see this in emergency rooms of hospitals. You see this in funeral homes. People, once too busy to think such things, suddenly are reaching out and grasping for what they know is there, and that is God. We have eternity placed in our hearts. We just know that we are different than animals. We treat the death of humans and the death of animals differently. We know that death isn’t the end of the road for us.

  The concept of eternity within us also leads to a sense of right and wrong within us. We know that there is a line, and once that line has been crossed, what was done is wrong. Now, where did that sense of right and wrong come from? It was placed within us. It is part of that eternity in our hearts.

  Psalms 19 states that the heavens declare the handiwork of God. Paul, in describing the Gentile people said, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Within us and around us, we know there is God. Denying that, is denying what is within us and it is denying the obvious. Many places, our country included, are quickly moving to being a secular society by removing all references to God. This may be a public policy, but it will never totally work, and the reason is because of what God has placed within us, eternity. We know deep down that there is a God.

  It takes the Bible, the divine revelation, to know who this God is and what He is like. Without the Bible, we are likely to worship the sun, sacrifice our children upon an altar and pray to a river. Without the Bible, we don’t know God’s name, His nature, nor His will. But with the Bible, we have come to know, understand and love God. We know what He wants and we know His character.

  Eternity within us—it’s in our DNA. It’s in our inner being. We long for a better place. We need help from someone greater than us. We have been created in the image of God.

  What a blessing that is! God wants you to find Him. God wants you to come to know Him. God has left His fingerprint upon your soul. Trying to live without God, just leaves us in a mess. We are not made that way.  Folks who try, substitute something else for God. They don’t realize it, but that’s what they are doing. It may be status, it may be wealth, it may be fame, it may be relationships, it may be sports—but there’s something driving them, something missing on the insides. They are looking. They are trying to find it. They don’t realize that it’s eternity that God has placed in their hearts. It is that fingerprint of God.

  God wants you with Him—now and forever. That’s just the way we’re made. We do our best when we walk with God. It gives us an inner peace, a confidence and a purpose. Success is finding God.

  That’s just the way we are…because that’s just the way He made us.

Roger