So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.-Genesis 1:27

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.-Ecclesiastes 3:11   

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. – Galatians 5:13 

 

Eternity

God, I bring my heartaches to you
And I expect You to dry my tears.
Sometimes I forget to be fearful of You,
Acting as if You and I are peers.
But once I remember Your power
Compared to the lack of mine,
I realize You are eternity
And I a mere moment in time.

Lord, I know that life eternal
Comes only by Grace through You.
My part is to repent of my sins
And have faith You will make me new.
Then to recognize Your infinite power,
And holiness far beyond mine,
Accepting that You are eternity
And I a mere moment in time.

Father, You say You have a plan for my life,
That Your promise to me can be true.
If only I can humble myself
By relinquishing my life to you.
That if I take this leap of faith
By accepting Your grace for me.
I can be more than a moment in time,
I can be reborn to eternity.
© Linda Troxell 1/11/16

 

God made everything under heaven and everything He made has a purpose unique to its being. I find it fascinating to look at the intricacies with which God made the world. He crafted this world in such a way that all of His creations, mineral, vegetable, and animal are interdependent. And the successful operation of the planet is dependent upon each species doing its own job. He created a system by which each of His creations can renew itself and a system that will prevent any of them from overpopulating. God’s creations are all amazing and all work in conjunction with one another. Each species which He created performs its role to proliferate without question or thought. But for man.

God’s greatest creation, the one He made in His own image, does not perform its role without question or thought. Because God gave man something he gave to no other creation; something that allows him to question his purpose and place in the world as well as choose his own behavior. He gave man a soul, a complex system made up of thoughts, feelings, self-awareness and free will. This makes man, with his wide range of feelings and the self-awareness which allows him to think objectively and subjectively about those feelings, the only creation of God who is aware of himself as an individual different from and apart from his environment. Consequently, it also makes him the only one of God’s creatures who is aware of its own inevitable death.

God gave man free will as a gift. But He knew that along with self -awareness, and awareness of certain death, His gift would prove to be quite overwhelming. That’s why He also supplied every human soul with the awareness that there is something more; something beyond this world we know and live in with its struggle and temptation and ultimate death.  This is the eternity of which Solomon speaks in Ecclesiastes; the eternity that God set in the hearts and souls of His most beloved creations. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.-Ecclesiastes 3:11   

Although God meant all of this complexity as a gift to man, He was fully aware that because of these gifts, the world might often seem quite empty, unfulfilling and frightening to a being with the awareness of its own death. So, in addition to placing eternity in our hearts, He also gifted us with hope. Hope that, even though we … cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end,-Ecclesiastes 3:11, one day we will find the fulfillment that we long for but which we will never find in this lonely world. With that hope and self-will, God hopes that we will not, as it says in Galatians 5:13…use your freedom to indulge the flesh, but that every one of us will, instead, turn to Him in our search for fulfillment. Even though we don’t understand what that fulfillment is, what it looks like or what it feels like, He wants us, through faith, to trust Him to lead us to the fulfillment for which we long.

 God does not want to be our peer, He does not want to be our friend or mentor. He wants to be our provider, our guardian, and our savior. God wants us to use the awareness and the hope with which He has gifted us to understand and believe, through faith, that He alone can save us from the angst that will certainly come when we ask ourselves the inevitable question, “is this all there is?” However, in order to be saved we must allow Him to be in charge of every part of our life; the big things, the small things, the celebrations, and the mourning. He wants to be our comfort, our guide, our confessor, our idol, and our ideal. He wants to be the first thing we are aware of in the morning and the last thing we think of at night. If we can do that for God, if we put Him first in our lives, He will, in return, lead us to that “something more” we have always hoped was waiting for us. And He promises that it is beautiful beyond anything of which we have dreamed.

 

Points of Prayer and Pondering

1. Have you always longed for and felt there had to be something more but couldn’t find it? Write about some of the things you’ve done or ways you have tried to find that something more.

    

2. What is one thing you could do today to show God that with your free will you are choosing for Him to be in charge of your life and for Him to provide you with something more?

    

3. Write a prayer to God thanking Him for his willingness to allow you to choose Him of your free will.