In Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says, “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.” We can’t know all the purposes of God, but we can certainly be aware of eternity. He has put it into our hearts – a certain taste or longing for it that cannot be discovered through the experiences of life. Men may deny eternity, or laugh at the need for it. But there will always be a longing within us for something more than we have experienced.

Creatures are not born with desire unless satisfactions for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger – there is such a thing as food. A duck wants to swim and there is such a thing as water. People desire to work and there is work to be done.

We find in ourselves a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy. The most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

Augustine, the great thinker and church leader of the 4th century, said, “Thou has made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they learn to rest in Thee.” That says it as succinctly as it could be said. The unrest we see in our world and in our hearts, tells us we have not found our rest until we have entered the world for which we are made – eternity.

C.S. Lewis, the popular British theologian of the 1950’s, helped us when he said, “Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes care to see that we do not mistake any of them for our home.”

– David Johnson, with revisions from Tim Johnson