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| “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” |
| —Ecclesiastes 3:11 |
Did you ever think of yourself as laboring under a burden? For the last week or so, I’ve shared with you some thoughts of King Solomon’s that he wrote at the end of his life. Some of these thoughts seem to drip with the early spring sap of helplessness—helplessness because there is more winter to come and the next freeze will stop the flow of sap.
But, when we read Solomon’s words, we have to focus on a phrase that he uses many times throughout this Book of Ecclesiastes. They are the words: “under the sun” or “under heaven.” It is as if Solomon is drawing a line between the earth and heaven and purposely excluding any influence that God might have on the spiritual well-being of His people.
The Bible Scholar/Teacher, Ravi Zacharias, suggest that we might paraphrase these modifiers in yet another phrase: “without God.” In other words, the helplessness and futility of which Solomon writes must be perceived as if the world was without God’s intervention by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
This, of course, is not the world in which we live. We, who follow Christ, have the power of the Spirit within us. He literally dwells inside our hearts and minds. As such, the Holy Spirit amplifies the Presence of God and His divine influence on our daily lives. So, as we read what Solomon has written, we must take each statement of helplessness as if the world around us was one in which the redemptive power of God, and His loving efforts to help us, were absent.
In that light, I suggest that you re-read the previous blog posts. Imagine, if you can, a world in which you did not know God personally through His Son, Jesus, and one in which you did not experience the Presence of God in your life through the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s pretty frightening, isn’t it? And, it would definitely be a world where meaningless futility was at the end of every transaction.
In today’s reading, found in Ecclesiastes 3:9-11, notice what Solomon states:
What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
In these few words, Solomon begins to take a momentary turn in his methodical declaration that all is meaningless. Instead, he holds out a ray of hope. To answer his question regarding the reward for hard work, Solomon suggests that God has burdened the human race with the glories of a beautiful creation. More so, God has placed a longing for eternity in the depths of the human heart.
How can this longing for eternity be a burden? C. S. Lewis provides an answer in his book, The Weight of Glory, where he writes:
Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object […] If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy.
The fact that God has placed within every single human heart the desire for eternity means that, when humans seek to satisfy that longing apart from God, they will find that nothing, absolutely nothing, truly satisfies. The hole in each of our hearts that God intends eternity to fill will remain vacant until He fills it with His glory.
Show me people running here and there trying to satisfy a longing that nothing can fill, and I will show you people who are truly living meaningless lives. No matter what they may accomplish, no matter what they may experience in the moment, no matter what they may say, they will always fall short and remain unsatisfied apart from becoming filled with the glory of God. Thus, Solomon has accurately predicted their state. They will, indeed, live lives that are truly meaningless.
The only way this burden on the human race can be lifted is through a personal relationship with God through His precious Son, Jesus. Yes, salvation is all about the forgiveness of our sins, the satisfaction of God’s wrath toward us—because in His holiness, He cannot tolerate the presence of sin—the atoning sacrifice, the substitutionary death of Jesus in our place. But, salvation is also about filling that hole in each of our hearts where the longing for eternity resides. For, without salvation, we cannot experience eternity with God. Unless our sins are covered by Christ’s blood, we cannot enter into eternal life with God—our uncovered sins would be an abomination to our Holy God.
As we begin a new day, let’s think about the great joy that we experience because God has placed eternity in our hearts. Let’s be glad that this longing is not a burden to us because God’s Presence has given our lives true meaning, value, and worth. We were made for eternity. We have heaven in view. And, our purpose here on earth is to share the vision that we can see through our spiritually healed eyes, so that God might draw those to Himself whom He has chosen.
The gospel songwriter, Mary Reeves Davis, captured a bit of this in a song that most of us have heard at one time or another. It may seem simplistic and quaint, but it smacks of great truth.
This world is not my home. I’m just a-passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door.
And, I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
Oh Lord, You know, I have no friend like You.
If heaven’s not my home, then Lord, what will I do?
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door.
And, I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
