You Were Made for Eternity

All the gold in the world, all the applause of the crowd, all the joy in the best relationships these are beautiful, but they are not enough. They whisper something deeper: that you were not made for this moment alone, but for something eternal.

This truth pulses through the aching poetry of Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” In that single verse, God tells us something profound that we were made for a story far grander than we can see, yet we're only given glimpses.

When Time Isn't Enough

There’s a tension in every human soul: we live in time, but we long for more. We want permanence in our joy, clarity in our stories, and answers to the chaos. Ecclesiastes 3 opens with poetic lines about the seasons of life birth and death, mourning and dancing, peace and war. These cycles are real, raw, and deeply human. But the Preacher’s point is not merely that there’s a time for everything it’s that we are not in control of these times.

We cannot determine when love begins or ends. We don’t schedule sorrow or celebration. And most painfully, we can’t undo what time has taken from us.

We are creatures caught between the beauty of a moment and the ache that it will not last.

A Glimpse of Forever in Your Chest

And yet, in the middle of these shifting seasons, God places eternity in the heart of man.

This is no small thing. The eternal infinite, unending, beyond decay or shadow somehow lives in you. Like Lucy’s reflection in The Last Battle, where she marvels at the stable that was “bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside,” our hearts were made to hold something too vast for time. As Queen Lucy said, “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

Your heart is that stable. The longing you feel for justice, for meaning, for unending beauty and love is not a defect. It’s a design.

It’s God’s fingerprint.

Why Loss Hurts So Much

When we lose someone, the pain is not only emotional it’s theological. Our grief whispers that death isn’t natural, even though it’s common. It’s not what we were made for. Why do we feel that the absence of a loved one is unbearable? Why do even unbelievers speak of loved ones “looking down on us,” or hope to see them again?

Because deep down, every person knows that life was meant to last. That relationships were designed to be permanent. The ache of grief is the echo of Eden, and the prophecy of a restored world.

As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

This world, with all its beauty, is not enough. And that's not a flaw it's a clue.

God’s Invitation in the Ache

When the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in our hearts “yet so that he cannot find out what God has done,” he’s showing us that our longings are not meant to lead us to pride or despair but to humility. We are not the Author. We don’t get to read the whole script. But we do know that the Author is good, and that He sees what we cannot.

This is the invitation of Ecclesiastes: to live with wonder, not certainty; to walk with God through mystery, not mastery. The things we cannot understand the injustices, the waiting, the heartbreak all become reminders that our story is still being written.

And the One writing it is not guessing.

Echoes and Images

The best parts of your life the love of a friend, the peace in a sunrise, the thrill of worship are not the end. They’re the echo of a tune you’ve never heard. The scent of a flower you haven’t found. As Lewis said in The Weight of Glory, they are “news from a far country we have not yet visited.”

So often, we treat these experiences as if they are the point chasing pleasure, clinging to people, idolizing moments. But the gifts are never the Giver. They are not the “thing itself.” They are images and shadows, pointing us to the real, eternal joy found in God alone.

The beauty of this world is not enough because you were made for more.

The Promise of Justice and Joy

Ecclesiastes 3:17 gives us another truth to hold onto: “God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.” Every injustice you’ve seen every wrong that haunts the news or your past will be brought to account. Nothing is lost to God.

He will judge. He will set right. He will make new.

And He will not waste the longing you feel now. That ache in your heart, that sense that life must mean more than this? It’s not your imagination. It’s eternity calling you home.

A Heart That Won’t Stop Beating

You were not made to end. Your story does not conclude with a grave. It stretches into forever. That’s why this world cannot satisfy you. It was never meant to.

The most breathtaking view, the most intimate love, the most joyful song all are too small for you. Because you were made in the image of an infinite God, for everlasting communion with Him.

So don’t numb the ache. Don’t curse it. Follow it. Let your heart long. Let it remember what it was made for. Let it cry out for the One who set eternity inside you.

Because only He can fill it.

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