By Martin Morrison
Haven’t you discovered certain music or a certain song awakens an inconsolable longing in your heart. An inexplicable longing. You wish it would never end. You wish you could live there forever. Sometimes it is so deep, it is painful. Have you ever wondered what that is? The Bible says that it is a longing for eternity. “God has set eternity in the hearts of man”, Ecclesiastes 3:11.
Now, you may say to me, I don’t believe in heaven or hell. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in the afterlife. I will never call myself a Methodist or a Muslim or Hindu or Baptist. That may well be true. But let me tell you what is equally true. You will never escape eternity. It is inside you. It has been placed there by your creator, whether you believe in him or not, whether you believe in organised religion or not.
We were made for eternity. We were hardwired to live for eternity. Eternity is not what you believe, Eternity is what you are. In the movie, The Matrix, Morpheus says to Neo, “Let me tell you why you are here. It’s because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. There is something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad”.
What’s wrong with the world, is that you and I were made for eternity and when we deny it, it’s like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. Ecclesiastes says that we were made for another world. We were hardwired to live forever. God has set eternity in our hearts.
Our problem is that we have denied that inescapable fact. Our problem is that we have eternity amnesia. We’ve forgotten that this world is not the destination but the preparation. We’ve forgotten that we were created for another world.
Let me tell you what happens when we have eternity amnesia. We live in constant frustration. We live with constant unrealistic expectations. Our problem is that we expect the things of this world to satisfy our yearning for another world. And it never will. No creature or created thing can satisfy the longing of our hearts, only the Creator can.
C S Lewis said, beware the false poison of the false infinite. It is sweet, but it is poison, because it is a false infinite. So we take a false infinite, a false god, a false idol and attempt to fill the vacuum of our disenchanted world, but it never works.
Because of my job, I often officiate at weddings. In the wedding talk, I often say what is politically incorrect. “If you think that one person , namely your new spouse, can satisfy all the desires of your heart, you will be sadly disillusioned. No human being can do that, only God can”.
You’ve seen those books. 1001 Books you must read before you die; 1001 Restaurants you must experience before you die; 1001 Places you must visit before you die; 1001 Movies you must see before you die. That is a destination mentality. This world is all there is. So try and squeeze every possible pleasure or experience into your life, to quench the longing of your soul. And Solomon the wisest man who ever lived, apart from Jesus, says that all you will be left with, is a bitter taste in your mouth, because nothing created can satisfy the eternal longing of your soul. Vanity, all is vanity.
The only antidote, the only answer is not to look at created things, but the Creator. The one who said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”, John 10:10.
For further Reading: Forever: Why you can’t live without it by Paul David Tripp, from which the main ideas of this devotion are derived. Available from Kindle, Amazon.