This is the ninety-ninth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

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There is a remarkable statement in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament which says: “God has made everything beautiful in its time; he has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Though we are made creatures–breathing, eating, sleeping, reproducing bodies along with the rest of the mammals–we also have this characteristic that keeps us looking to the spiritual side of life. God has “set eternity in the human heart.” That is why we want to believe.

If we are only physical beings, then we’d simply carry on living like animals. If we are only spiritual beings, then we’d live like the angels. (But nobody thinks that.)

What is made, and what is eternal–here are these two worlds, not a contradiction and not a separation, because what is Made came from the Eternal. Most people who believe in God understand God to be the Creator. So God, the eternal one, made my body, and the trees from which were cut the lumber that became my house, and the grains from which my breakfast cereal comes, and even the silicon from which a Japanese company manufactured the screen for my television.

Now this is our best chance at living good days and having some quality of life: having our eyes wide open to these two worlds, the Made and the Eternal. Why does it matter? The Eternal dignifies the Made. It defines its purpose. It warns me about my limitations. God the eternal inhabits the Creation he made.

        Believing in God lets me know my bank account is not the measure of my worth.
        Believing is the way I know I’m more than an animal.
        Believing connects me with another world where all is right and just and harmonious–a world that can impress itself on the Made world like a die stamped on soft metal.
        Believing in God assures me that my happiness 20 years from now is not really going to be based on the size of my bank account at that time.
        Believing tempers my passions and leads me away from temptations and delivers me from evil.

No wonder we want to believe.

So the writer of Ecclesiastes puts forth this proposition: “God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…” and then goes on to say, “yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil–this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.”

The person who wrote this must have been dreading going in to work that day. Why else would he call it “toil”? Why else would he be searching for God to give some appropriate meaning to going out to dusty fields or whatever his labor was going to be that day? This is also a person who really enjoys eating and drinking and finding satisfaction. He is not afraid to imagine the eternal intersecting the made.

The writer talks about eating and drinking and having satisfaction–but don’t think he’s a hedonist. It isn’t just about the food. He wants his mealtimes to have meaning. He wants his “toil” to have meaning. He wants to believe. And he does believe that the satisfaction of the body today is connected with the Eternal World if he sees his dinner and every other appropriate physical satisfaction as “the gift of God.”

When we believe, really believe (because we really do want to believe this), that our lives are full of very ordinary almost unnoticeable movements that, upon closer examination, are a thousand gifts of God–it changes the ordinary into the extraordinary.

        A meal is a gift,
        a day of work is a gift,
        a good conversation is a gift.
        A car is a gift,
        an hour of worship is a gift,
        a day at the ballpark with your kid is a gift,
        narrowly avoiding an auto accident is a gift.

If this did nothing more than fill us with gratitude every day, that would revolutionize our lives. Gratitude sees gifting in the most ordinary events: a night out with your spouse, an article in the newspaper that tells the truth, a verse of Scripture that bounces around in your head, an hour of quiet.

Gratitude will change your life, but this is about more than gratitude. Seeing the Eternal behind the Made, and seeing yourself as a creature that can perceive both, makes you stop and look at everything differently. As C. S. Lewis once said: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen–not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
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For the kids you love this Easter, A Book of Prayers for Kids: Ways to Talk to God Every Day
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Mel Lawrenz (@MelLawrenz) trains an international network of Christian leaders, ministry pioneers, and thought-leaders. He served as senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for ten years and now serves as Elmbrook’s teaching pastor. He has a PhD in the history of Christian thought and is on the adjunct faculty of Trinity International University. Mel is the author of 18 books, including How to Understand the Bible—A Simple Guide and Spiritual Influence: the Hidden Power Behind Leadership (Zondervan, 2012). See more of Mel’s writing at WordWay.