Eternity in Our Hearts

by John Comer

We’re trapped, and we’re struggling to go free. We’re caught up in time. More accurately, perhaps, we’re tied down by it. There’s a time to be born and a time to die, and a time for everything that lies in between. We live by the calendar and clock. We have past time and future time, and at least for a millisecond, present time. (And you will have immediately realized that calendar, clock, past, future, present, millisecond, and immediately, as well as the tenses of the verbs used here, all reinforce the reality of our being caught in the grip of time.)

Time is an earth thing. When God created our universe he spoke in terms of days. He measured their length and numbered them. We count seven of them to a week. He gave us heavenly bodies by which to measure time, and he put the whole thing together so we have seasons of the year. Spring turns into summer, and the cycle works through time until it’s spring again.

When Adam and Eve messed things up back in their garden, death came to the human family. Since then the time we have to live has been restricted. Though most of us probably don’t use our King James Bible much anymore, we remember its wording about “three score and ten” years. Even our grade school children can multiply 20 by 3 and add 10. It’s not hard to come up with the number of this projected life span, though some will be strong and healthy enough to add a few years to that total. This same passage (Psalm 90) reminds us that even if we receive the bonus of extra years, still “they pass quickly, and we fly away.”

Would life be simpler without our having to live within the constraints of time? What do you suppose the Bible means when it says God has “set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11)? Could it be that he imprinted eternity upon our souls in such a way that we can never be content with mere time? Does something in our nature call for the everlasting? Some impulse that draws us beyond time? Maybe it has to do with having been created in God’s image. Possibly it’s a small spark of what Adam had before the Fall, a remaining vestige of lost dignity left implanted within us by God. Our hearts call out for eternity.

God is from everlasting to everlasting. Tucked in between is a tiny spot called Time. We can escape that little spot and enter into the everlasting with our eternal Father. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).