The Meaning In Eternity
Troy Martin is a senior at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Troy is very active on campus serving as a student leader for the on-campus ministry, CRU. We are so excited for Troy to join our Boldly Seeking Community. He is sharing with us such an incredible insight to the meaning in eternity and we cannot wait for you to read it.
Read below, comment, and join the conversation! XO, the Boldly Seeking Team
There once was a shepherd boy who was asked by a king “How many seconds are there in eternity?”. The shepherd boy replied “There is a mountain made of diamond which stands two and a half miles high, the same wide, and the same in depth. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the mountain, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will have passed.”
This is a slightly revised excerpt from the Brother’s Grimm tale “The Shepherd Boy”, which gives us a glimpse into just how massively incomprehensible the concept of “eternity” is to us. Makes you feel pretty small in comparison, doesn’t it? The bible even says that our lives are but “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Eternity makes ourselves, and the things we do, seem inconsequential.
Ecclesiastes 1:2-7 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
The Teacher is asking what everyone has asked themselves at some point - “What is the meaning of all this - my life, this world, these things? What purpose could it have when it seems so temporary?” After all, the Teacher says in chapter 3 “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Eternity is daunting for all of us, because like God, it is impossible for us to fully comprehend it. I’d even venture to say that it is because of God’s incomprehensible nature that eternity is incomprehensible, since it is itself a characteristic of God - He is eternal. He sees things from an eternal perspective, one that acknowledges all that is past and all that will be to the end of days. While eternity may be intimidating to think about, we as followers of Jesus are called to see things not as the Earth sees them, but how God sees them - through the lens of eternity. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view…” (2 Cor. 5:16).
What does that mean? To see things through an eternal perspective. Well, as all things in this world, it goes back to the Gospel. At the beginning of eternity, God created everything, including us. We were in a perfect relationship with Him, but then we rebelled against Him in pride. We were cast out of the garden, and now we live in the world that Ecclesiastes describes - a world where nothing fulfills, nothing satisfies, nothing has meaning. God never left us though. He sent His son Jesus to die on the cross, to be the righteous sacrifice that restores our relationship with God, so long as we believe in Jesus’s death and resurrection and choose to follow Him. There will be a day, when Jesus returns again in all glory and majesty, when everyone will sit in front of the judgement seat of Christ, when those who have chosen to re-enter relationship with Him will enter into a perfect eternal kingdom with Him and the rest will be separated from the goodness of God forever, and when time will once again be meaningless and everything else will once again have meaning.
That’s it. That is the eternal perspective. The story of the Gospel is the story of eternity, and we as Christians are to live a life in light of these truths. We know where it started, and we know where it’s going. I don’t know about you, but I look around at this world we live in, and I am absolutely ready for the eternal one where “the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4). This year I have felt the pull of eternity more and more, longing to have it come already. I think Paul sums up this feeling of desire best in 2 Corinthians:
2 Corinthians 5:1-5 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
When we re-enter a relationship with God, the Holy Spirit gives us but a taste of what eternity will be like with Him, and we cannot help but want more of it. But what is this to say, that we should ignore the present day and think only of the days to come? By no means! Instead, our view of eternity should inform how we conduct ourselves in the present. Those things that are temporary, that fill the present time but do not carry forth into eternity, these things are meaningless. What does have meaning then are those things that exist on the eternal scope, which includes the present. What is eternal? God, certainly, as we have already discussed, and this makes sense to us as Christians. We are to live a life centered on Christ. As Jesus says in Matthew 22, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.”. What follows this verse is the other thing that is eternal - that has meaning; “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”. Your soul, my soul, everyone’s soul is eternal. Read this quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…”
These two things are what have meaning in this world - God and each other. These are the things we are to set our hearts on. There’s a reason we are called to make disciples of all nations - it is the thing that most glorifies God and secures people’s souls for eternity. As I said earlier, there will come a day when everyone will appear before His judgement seat, and all we’ve done in this life “will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each one’s work. If what they have built survives, they will receive their reward. If it is burned up, they will suffer loss; they themselves will be saved, but only as one escaping the flames.” (1 Cor. 3:13-15). What we do for others and for God will be all that we bring with into His eternal kingdom - all else will be burned away.
A wise and well-spoken man once asked me “How big will your pile of ash be?”. How big will yours be? I ask this not to strike fear into you or make you feel an obligation or pressure to perform, no. This is just a useful question to “shock” ourselves into an eternal perspective. We should not be fearful or pressured by what comes at the end of days. Paul tells us shortly after the 2 Corinthians quotation above that “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”. Our love, or more accurately Christ’s love through us, for all things eternal is our driving force in all this. There is now no condemnation for us as Christ followers (Romans 8:1)! We do not need to be afraid or pressured, instead filled with hope and love that comes from the Gospel.
Friends, are you looking at your life and those around you through an eternal perspective? Are your priorities fixed on the things that have meaning? Are you filled with the hope that eternity with a loving God brings? I encourage you today, and the next day, and the next, to pray to God to fix your eyes on Him and to give you an eternal perspective. Through that lens you will find hope, love, and meaning. Be comforted in the promise we have of His eternal kingdom, and be challenged by the command to live out the present in anticipation of that eternity.
