What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:9–11
In a recent article we considered the fact that there is beauty in all the seasons that God has made. There is beauty in every season of the year, in each individual day, and even in every season of life. Since God has given every season its own beauty, we ought to enjoy each (even though each also carries its own sorrows) and realize that this world isn’t our home anyway, for although we live in a decaying world, God has “put eternity in our hearts.”
Of all that God has made, the concept of eternity resides only in man. God told Daniel that some would rise to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2). Although we are constantly dealing with finite things that can be counted or quantified in some way, we all have some concept (however difficult it may be to express) of the infinite. In fact, every civilization of man has developed the concept of boundlessness to some level: God has put it into man’s heart! No other creature ever sat and pondered what is out there beyond the field of what the eye can see. Only man has ever pondered the seeming senselessness of expending time and energy on a world that will not bear any mark of our existence only a short time after we leave it. Only man has ever thought to pause and consider the beauty of the things around him and attempt to capture that beauty through works of his own. Solomon says, “Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals” (Ecclesiastes 3:18). There is a sense in which we are like them, since man lives and dies a mortal existence just as the beast does (vv 19–20), but there is this marked difference nevertheless. Just think: you will live forever! But where?
Of all that God has made in this world, man is all that is eternal. Although the earth appears to “abide forever” (Ecclesiastes 1:4), the truth is that it will one day be destroyed, but we will remain (2 Peter 3:10–13). The truth is that we are not merely mortal; we are immortal beings living in mortal bodies which are destined to be exchanged for other bodies that will never perish (1 Corinthians 15:53–54; 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:4). Just as the patriarch’s tent was the same wherever he pitched it in the wilderness, we who dwell in Christ are at home throughout our pilgrimage here in this world, regardless of the time or place we occupy in it.
God has made us conspicuously out of place in this world so that we might learn to look for another. Our conceptualization of eternity makes us long for something lasting. The patriarchs looked for that heavenly city with foundations unlike the temporary dwellings they carried about (Hebrews 11:13–16). The house we currently inhabit is bound by flesh and by time, but the dwelling that the Lord has prepared for us is bound by neither. The place we are seeking is a place where “your sun shall no longer go down, nor shall your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended” (Isaiah 60:20). The sun never sets in this place because “the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23). What about you? Do you feel at home in this world, or are you longing for that habitation that God has prepared in which there will be no more ebb and flow?
When we reach the end of this life, time will pass away. There will be no more time to die or to weep (Revelation 21:4; cf. Ecclesiastes 3:2, 4). There will be no more time to build or to gather together (cf. Ecclesiastes 3:3, 5), for all of our labor will be ended. When the stream of time flows into the ocean of eternity, will you be ready? There is also a time for salvation, and that time is now (2 Corinthians 6:2)!