We were all created with this ginormous hole in our soul. We try to fill it with many things. Over the years I’ve tried filling it with love; sex; drinking; partying; shopping; money; friendships. All these things are a robber of your precious time. Before you know it you are looking back on your existence asking yourself how you got here.

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 (Ecclesiastes 3:11, ESV).

More than three thousand years ago, a king named Solomon chronicled his search for fulfillment. He was the wisest and richest man of all time. If anyone could stroll down every conceivable avenue of potential satisfaction, it was this king of Israel.

Ecclesiastes details Solomon’s pursuit of pleasure. He constructed a palace so amazing it staggered world leaders; accumulated many jewels and possessions; pursued crazy advanced studies; was with a different woman every day. He explored it all, yet with tears of frustration just like us concluded, “So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind”(Ecclesiastes 2:17). How many of us have said the same thing???

Solomon discovered what so many fail to realize: history is a repetitive loop of personal uselessness , with every imaginable experience on the horizontal plane promising fulfillment it can never truly deliver. Solomon was crushed by the realization that on his own, he could not create a happiness or satisfaction that would endure beyond the temporary. In Ecclesiastes 3, he turned his expression of frustration on God who made him, concluding, “He has put eternity into man’s heart” (3:11).

In this passage, eternity refers to our deep and abiding awareness of something outside the boundaries of our senses. Humans are unique because we hunger for something the experiences of this planet cannot satisfy—a quest for eternity.

The meaning of Solomon’s statement are staggering: people are looking for the eternity God created them to long for, but they can’t find it on their own. Like hungry people locked outside a gourmet restaurant, we know satisfaction is near but can’t get to the food. Like blind people standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, we feel the awesomeness close at hand with no capacity to take it in.

Searching for eternity does not lead to finding—until God Himself prevents our wandering pursuit.

As Solomon rightly observed, all people share the need for fulfillment to come from a source outside of self and beyond this world: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

God designed us so that we cannot find fulfillment or lasting enjoyment apart from this eternity. The more we try to satisfy our deepest longing by good and bad level means, the more likely we are to miss God’s vertical invitation to experience Him.

Do you sense that same longing in your soul? Have you known the emptiness of looking for satisfaction in the next raise or relationship or reward? Like Solomon, you have a longing for eternity that only God can satisfy. The underlying vacuum in the center of every soul is put there from God Himself. He is the One who has placed eternity in our hearts—and only He can fill it. Are we going to surrender to him or keep doing it our way? That’s a question to ponder?

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