Journeying Toward an Unseen World

Modern man prides himself on being grounded eyes on the tangible, hands in the dirt, mind fixed on what can be measured and tested. He believes what he can see, taste, hear, and touch. To him, the physical is the foundation of reality. But to those who know the voice of the Shepherd, this world is only the footnote. The real story lies beyond the veil. We are, as Scripture tells us, pilgrims traveling through a shadowland toward a country we cannot yet see but one more solid and enduring than the ground beneath our feet.

The Herd Mentality of Modernity

There’s a spiritual dullness that marks much of our world today. The modern mind scoffs at anything outside its five senses. Like cows grazing a hillside, it is content with what it can consume. Rumors of invisible realms, of divine glory, of eternal realities are treated like fairytales charming, perhaps, but ultimately irrelevant.

“Science and reason,” many say, “have exposed such fables.” Yet, as David Wells aptly noted, “The hand that gives so generously in the material realm also takes away devastatingly in the spiritual.” Our modern comforts our medicines, machines, and media have dulled our appetite for the unseen. We have become more rational, but less reverent.

Still, the ache remains. Our senses may be numbed, but our souls remember. Deep down, every heart knows that there is more.

The Foundation of All That Is

The Christian does not deny the physical world; we simply know it isn’t primary. It’s derivative. God, who is Spirit (John 4:24), spoke the material into being. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3). The spiritual preceded the physical. The invisible begot the visible. The world we see with our eyes is not the foundation it is the echo.

This isn’t just theology. It’s a call to examine what we believe to be most real. Where do your time, affection, and energy go? Can your life be explained apart from Christ? If not, then you’re already answering the question: the unseen world is the truest reality you know.

Eyes That See the Invisible

Hebrews 11 tells the story of men and women who lived with eyes set on another world. Noah built a boat before a drop of rain had fallen. Abraham walked away from the only home he’d ever known, trusting in a city not built by human hands. Moses turned his back on Pharaoh’s palace, “enduring as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).

These were people who risked everything for promises they had only seen “from afar” (Hebrews 11:13). They knew that this present world was not their home. They were strangers and exiles here. And when they died, they died in faith because they knew they were heading toward something better “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).

This World Is the Shadow

The passing nature of this world is one of Scripture’s loudest declarations. “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Psalm 144:4). Paul called his own afflictions “light and momentary” compared to the “eternal weight of glory” that awaited him (2 Corinthians 4:17). He saw through the temporary to the eternal, and so he lived not by what was seen, but by what was unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18).

That eternal world is not less real it is more real. The physical world is not false, but it is fleeting. Eternity is not an abstraction it is the substance. We do not walk away from reality when we look toward heaven; we finally begin to grasp it.

Awaken to What Is Most Real

Henry Scougal once wrote, “We must therefore endeavor to stir our minds towards serious belief and firm persuasion of divine truths... until we clearly understand that they are not dreams. No, indeed; it is everything else that is a dream or a shadow.”

It is this world that fades like mist. It is this life that vanishes like a vapor. Everything around us will soon give way to eternity. So why do we invest our hope, our energy, our deepest affections in what cannot last?

Set your mind where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1–2). Let the reality of eternity reframe your priorities. Let heaven reorient your heart. Because for the believer, this world is not the destination it’s the departure gate.

Loving the Unseen Savior

Peter writes to early Christians and says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him” (1 Peter 1:8). This is the paradox of faith. We love one we’ve never laid eyes on, we trust in a future we’ve never tasted, we follow a path that ends in a place our feet have never touched.

But this unseen world is not a fantasy. It is the true world, the better world, the world built by God’s hands. And when we arrive, we will find that all the joy, all the beauty, all the goodness we ever tasted here was just a shadow of what is to come.

Christian, do not live as if this world is all there is. Travel on with eyes wide open. Fix your gaze on the glory ahead. Refuse to be lulled to sleep by materialism and mediocrity. For we are not cows grazing a field. We are pilgrims headed for a kingdom, saints journeying to the city of God.

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