Disconnection Creates Discomfort.
”God has planted eternity in the human heart.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT.
My thoughts and comments today are about, “eternity.”
Clocks and calendars rule our daily lives. Can you envision eternity, a time with a beginning but without a known end? Everything about our lives here and now is measured with minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and lifetimes.
We are such slaves of time that we cannot really envision the concept of forever. Forever seems an exaggeration, even an impossibility. Yet life as we know it will have an end. The Bible encourages awareness of the limits of time and the superseding importance and endless extent of eternity.
The Bible counsels you to pray, “Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.” Psalm 90:12 TLB. Everything has a life span. As we experience time now, it is not an endless commodity. That is the reality for now. Solomon wisely observed, “there is a time to be born and a time to die.” Ecclesiastes 3:2 NIV.
If you experience the first, you will inevitably experience the latter. We all live within those narrow boundaries. But that will not be your reality in eternity. God intends so much more for you.
Have you read about the American Monarch Butterfly, maybe one of the most beautiful of its kind? Because they cannot survive the cold, they migrate up to 2,500 miles each year for their warm, winter hibernation. From west of the Rockies, they migrate every year to Pacific Grove, CA. When they migrate, oddly enough they return to the same California Eucalyptus trees each and every year, even though they are the fourth generation of the Monarch butterflies since the previous year’s migration.
Just as geese migrate south each winter, or salmon swim upstream to spawn where they were hatched, or swallows return to San Juan Capistrano in California from Argentina each March and return home in October, God has also put a permanent and eternal return address inside your spirit to guide you home to Him as well.
Solomon understood this when he wrote, “God has planted eternity in the human heart.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT. You and I were born with a longing for eternity in our hearts. We are created for unending fellowship with God, not separation from Him.
When you try to live apart from God, you will feel the discomfort of disconnection. And the devil blinds you from seeing the spiritual origin of your discontent. You cannot even imagine what it would be like to be apart from the Source of life forever? None of the horrors of Hell are worse than the absence and endless separation from God’s presence.
The Bible contrasts two kinds of people. There are those who know, love, and serve the Lord and those who do not. Which of those do you want to describe you? The Bible explains, “All [some people] think about is this life here on earth. But we are citizens of Heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for Him to return as our Savior.” Read Philippians 3:19-21 NLT.
I love this quote; “The greatest calamity is not to feel far from home when you are, but to feel right at home when you’re not.” In the human spirit, God-placed a spiritual knowledge that this world is not your final home. Stop living like it is, settling in and making plans as though it were. Your eternal home is where you will truly experience what forever is all about.
In the beloved shepherd’s Psalm, David wrote, “The Lord is my Shepherd . . I will live in the house of the Lord forever!” David did not think of, “the house of the Lord,” as a place; but with longing, he spoke of that as a special presence. Jesus described Heaven as, “In My Father’s house . . I go to prepare a place for you . . and I will receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also.” John 14:1-3. See Psalm 27:3-4 NIV. You can forever be with God and others who look for His coming and long for His appearing. Read 2 Timothy 4:6-8 NIV.
My prayer for you is to value eternity more than today.
EDL Communications 2019
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