Eternity in our Hearts

As soon as I looked up this verse from Ecclesiastes, I was reminded that one other verse comes up with the same search. The words I used were “eternity” and “heart”. 

This is what I was looking for: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”[1] 

This consideration that, “he has put eternity into man’s heart,” amazes me, and all the more as the finish line grows closer every day. 

The one other verse that came up with that search was this: “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”[2] 

We cannot escape this connection between God putting eternity into our hearts and God inhabiting eternity. In his own words, he inhabits both the eternity that is his home and the life of the person who is contrite and lowly of spirit. 

The history of man begins with this action of God: “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”[3] 

What are human beings made of? Dust, dirt, soil.[4] 

Where did our life come from? The God who created us breathed into us the breath of life. 

What did the breath of life do to us? It made man a living creature. 

We all know that man is also a dying creature. Death came into the world because of sin. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,”[5] and, “the wages of sin is death.”[6] Sin destroyed the highest good of the life we were given, which was to walk with God our Creator. 

So now we have a creature that is both “dead in trespasses and sins… by nature children of wrath,”[7] and yet still with eternity in our hearts telling us we were made for more. At the same time, we have the God who inhabits eternity looking for the poor in spirit with whom he can live. 

But how do we get past death? What does it matter that eternity is in our hearts if our sins have killed us in one way and brought a death sentence over us in another way? 

The only hope for the world is that the same God who breathed into man the breath of life has also sent his Son into the world to restore us to life. 

When Jesus entered the world, he arrived with this declaration: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”[8] 

In Jesus was life. When Jesus breathed into the first man the breath of life, he was giving man the life that was in him. When Jesus came into the world of zombies that were living in death, the reality of life was still in him. And, for spiritually dead-man-walking people, this was the great light that would lead us back to life. 

So, what is the good news of great joy to the people living in darkness? 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[9] 

This is the light, folks. God so loved the world of spiritual zombies that he gave us his only Son, the Creator who breathed into us the breath of life in creation, and through believing in Jesus Christ as Creator and Savior we will no longer perish in our sins but “have eternal life”, the life Jesus breathed into us in the beginning. 

God’s promise is that, “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.”[10] 

He says that eternal life is “that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”[11] 

Knowing the only true God and his Son begins with the God who inhabits eternity also coming into the lives of the poor in spirit who receive him, giving us eternal life now so that we begin getting to know him, and one day taking us to his dwelling place where the eternity he has already placed in our hearts will be fully satisfied in his presence forever. 

I urge you to look into the Book of Life, the Bible, the breathed-out words of God, and let your heart humble itself before him to admit that you are dead and dying without Jesus, and that you want to receive the life that is in the Son of the living God. 

As it is written, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”[12] 

The worst part of the coronavirus is the possibility that it could kill us. However, even this is no match for Jesus. He is “the resurrection and the life.” Whoever believes in him, “even though he die, yet shall he live.”[13]

 

© 2021 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

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[1] Ecclesiastes 3:11

[2] Isaiah 57:15

[3] Genesis 2:7

[4] This is easily verified by what we turn back into when we die!

[5] Romans 3:23

[6] Romans 6:23

[7] Ephesians 2:1-3

[8] John 1:4

[9] John 3:16

[10] John 3:36

[11] John 17:3

[12] John 20:30-31

[13] See John 11:25-26 (in context of John 11:1-57)