Juxtaposing Time With Eternity

Ecclesiastes 3:11 - "He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end."

Solomon reveals a great conundrum in this verse. He first tells us everything has an ordered sequence that is revealed according to God's will. This is the Lord's wisdom in making the visible world bound by the laws of time and space. However, then he states how God has put the idea of eternity in the heart of man so that he would understand that time is limited only to this present world. In addition, He has not allowed man to understand eternity in its fullness, only the concept of it which baffles all due to its incomprehensibility.

The reason for God's juxtaposition is simple yet not easy to understand. He desires his greatest creation, mankind, to know that we are only in a temporal state and that He is eternal. Yet, at the same time, He gives us hope of eternity as time will one day be swallowed up by the everlasting. When we as temporal beings think about eternity, it causes us to fear the Lord and His awesomeness, preparing us for our eternal state. Paul tells us to set our minds on things above, for in so doing, we align our affections with the fact that we are truly eternal (Colossians 3:2).

May we all dwell on the Eternal One, preparing ourselves for a timeless eternity with our Maker.