Eternity in the Heart, by Casey Ferguson
Which of us have ever seen a friend or family member after a length of time and were surprised by how much they’d changed? This can especially be the case with children. In a world in which nothing lasts forever, and in fact most things are very temporary, it seems by now we would learn to anticipate how time affects us. Nonetheless, anytime the life of a friend or relative comes to an end, even if anticipated, death still has the surprising ability to hurt us.
At an apologetic level it can be argued that our tendency as humans to be surprised again and again at the working of time indicates the eternal nature of the soul. For us to be caught off guard repeatedly by something so consistent is absurd. What would we say if a fish were constantly surprised by the wetness of water: it doesn’t make sense unless the fish were ultimately intended for dry land. In the same way our own yearning for immortality is silly if we were never meant to live for ever.
God’s warning to Adam in the garden of Eden was that the day he ate of the forbidden fruit he would die, and when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden one of the things God did was to separate them from the tree of life (Gen. 2:8-3:24). In the very first chapters of the Bible we see that man had had an opportunity to live forever but relinquished this right. Through the death of Jesus, however, man has been redeemed, offered another shot at an eternal relationship with God.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, the author writes, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts…“
“… eternity in their hearts…” God has imbued man’s spirit with a longing for eternity; he has filled all our hearts with a desire to live forever. The argument from evolution that man is just the result of time plus matter plus chance does not account for man’s inherent predisposition to finish this chapter and expect another, better one to follow.
When comparing world religions, only the Christian story can give a sufficient answer as to why we are not satisfied with the temporal nature of this life. We feel there is something more because there is. We are not trapped in a meaningless existence which climaxes to a point of nothingness, but instead we have a set destination.
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Amen! Only through Christ are we assured of eternal life. Thank you Jesus!