God Set Eternity in Your Heart

It’s an overcast, dull and sleepy day in our little corner of the southeast, but inside of me there is a yearning and longing that seems to frequently punctuate my days. It’s a longing for the eternal and the significant, a longing for peace and beauty. I lay my little boy to nap, start another load of laundry, light a candle, try to relax and spend time with God and in the scriptures. He is my peace, He is all beauty, He is eternal, and He is the only reason my life carries meaning and significance. And I know that my work is eternal. I know that raising a child and breathing prayers and serving my husband are kingdom-work. But why does it feel like I’m not “there” yet? What is this stirring and longing in my heart?

My yearning and passion for “more” is a double-edged sword in my life. The “bad” is that sometimes I disdain the mundane. I don’t believe God and I forget that folding laundry and paying bills and scrubbing the walls behind the toilets are an offering up of my life to God. In whatever work He gives me to do, I have the opportunity to present an offering to Him, a sacrifice of my life to God. I am incredibly thankful that, in general, I love the work that He has called me to do, and I love that I can make food and scrub and clean and work and hug and read storybooks — all to the glory of God. But sometimes I don’t love the calling, and I’m bored and tired, and I forget or just wickedly disbelieve the truth of the calling He has laid on my life. I argue with Him in my spirit, convinced that I could come up with some work that would be much more spiritual and would be the higher and greater challenge of my talents, energies, and time.

I feel certain that in whatever calling God has placed on your life, there is the temptation to view another calling as more spiritual or worthy. I am a stay-at-home wife and mom, but you may be a corporate executive or a firefighter or an empty nester or a college student and still “feel” this longing for the eternal and for “more.”
I am reminded of 1 Corinthians 12, and especially verse 18:
“But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.”
We continue in our service to God in the position to which He has called us, believing in faith (not with eyes on the temporal but with eyes on the eternal) that we are filled by God to do the work to which He has called us, offering day after day and prayer after prayer and praise and song and sorrow and joy all to God to be consumed as the sacrifice of our lives to Him. This is a life of worship and sacrifice.

There is a “good” side to this double-edged sword. God set eternity in your heart. You are not home yet, and you feel the ache for home. You are a stranger, a pilgrim; you are only passing through. I am reminded this overcast morning to thank God for the longing and yearning in my heart, because the eyes-fixed-on-the-unseen keep my heart anchored and patriotic — patriotic for my allegiance to that eternal and heavenly citizenship, looking to heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Chist (Philippians 3:20).

Join me as I meditate and set the eyes of my heart on these words of Jesus as I serve Him today?

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” John 14:1-3

Now I’m headed to put away that laundry. May God keep me focused on the eternal and filled with a grateful heart for the promises and words of God and for your sharing in fellowship and life with me this morning. Thank you.

<3, amanda

Resources and Links

Listen to David Phelps No More Night. Thank you, God, for what’s to come.

Heaven: God’s Highest Hope. What a jewel is this teaching from Max Lucado.

“Every Good Endeavor,” by Timothy Keller. I’m hoping to read this one soon.

..This post is happily shared with Thrive at Home Thursday and Christian Mommy Blogger’s Fellowship Friday linkup..

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