Day: July 15, 2012

We long for permanence, for the unchanging, for constancy, and in this world we are frustrated because the truly permanent is not yet fully here. Notice I say not yet fully here. What is permanently here, for the believer, is God’s Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present even now to always remind us that, in the midst of this temporally-bound, fallen world the Eternal One has already come to dwell, and where God is so is His kingdom. The Kingdom of God is among us today, present in the form of a divine paradox, because while it is present it is not yet present in all its fullness.

Human beings seek to assuage the ache for permanence through any number of ultimately futile pursuits, many of which are not inherently evil, but none of which are fully effective. Our quests for the intransient may take the form, for instance, of simple nostalgia. Americans, as an example, are inveterate collectors. Witness the rise of eBay, now an international phenomenon. It appears that we can easily find and purchase a seemingly endless number of accoutrements from our youth that make us briefly feel a sense of childhood transcendence once again. Unfortunately the trappings of childhood do not keep us from continuing to age and coming to face the inevitability of leaving our comforting collections behind us in death.

Others seek constancy in deeper places like the human commitments of marriage and childbearing, through the loving companion and the generational legacy of offspring. Both of these things are God-given and good but, again, neither escapes the ticking clock of human mortality. Even if our spouses and children outlive us we must face the fact that, even then, our marriages and families do not travel with us beyond the grave.

These are just a few obvious examples of trying to secure the comfort of the unchanging. There are others, but all share one thing in common: they are trapped in the temporality of a world that is passing away, and thus cannot secure the very thing that they are sought for.

That thing is not really a thing at all, but a state. The Bible tells us that our Maker has “set eternity in our hearts”. The truth is we are eternal beings. This is one more aspect of being made in the image of our eternal Lord. Our deep yearning for permanence is a natural outgrowth of that image-bearing. We long for things not to change because we are the creation of the only One who never changes.

And so it is only in relationship with God that we can actually seek and find the permanence we legitimately crave. He truly is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and in a world that finds itself in the throes of almost constant change this unchanging nature of God is the only refuge for eternal creatures such as us. By all means enjoy the good things of this world, enjoy them with gusto. But never forget that you cannot hold onto them. You can only truly hold on to Him, and wait for Heaven, the place of perfection, the eternally unchanging dwelling-place of God and His people.