Day 93.

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Eccl 3:11 NLT

From the outset of this devotional series, it should have been evident to you, the reader, that I was aware, as this text says, that the search for eternity (meaning) was in my heart. As I wrote in my journal, “We are the slaves of life and we drag our shackles with us from day to day, while life, like water, runs through our fingers. We live our lives of obscurity in the valley between the snow-capped mountain peaks of two eternities.” Ecclesiastes 3 begins with the well-known words “For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven…” Time is our master. It moves in an unstoppable course. It has a curious hold over us. We can’t beat it. Time is the ultimate avenger. Old age is the price you pay for wisdom, and then it seems too late. The phrase “time heals” is not true, we only learn to cope with loss while we ourselves move to the inevitable.

Tragedies and trials will keep hurting our memories for years. Many great people have learnt that the pole of power is greasy. As the first chapters of Ecclesiastes have demonstrated, life is like a giant windmill that slowly turns the same old cycle from birth to death, generation after generation. Each generation repeats what the previous achieved “What has been, it is what will be, And what has been done, it is what will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun..”(1:9 NASB) “In the few days of our meaningless lives, who knows how our days can best be spent? Our lives are like a shadow. Who can tell what will happen on this earth after we are gone?” (6:12 NLT)

Just as man invented the engine to run on petrol and it wont run on anything else, so, God designed the human machine and He made us to run on Himself. He is the fuel of our spirits. Life is a burden and God has withheld the ability to enjoy it until we find Him, who is the source of real fulfilment. Oh, how people try so hard to silence that whispering of eternity. I heard it in the quiet moments of my early life.

For those who believe not the power of Jesus’ resurrection this is Solomon’s lament, “The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered.” (9:5 NLT) Before my surrender this is the thought that troubled me; within one generation we will all be forgotten! What keeps a person from coming to God? All the things in this book. I will share a serious story tomorrow.