He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, without the possibility that mankind will find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Last year was quite a year for me.
I ran in a local election for school board. People expected a politician or a Charlie Kirk—both of which I was not. In fact I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before, and unfortunately he was killed exactly as I, a Christian, attempted to run for a seat against an extreme liberal incumbent board that wanted to dash me against the rocks of DEI policy.
“This is not a political race!” they screamed from their side as they pocketed funding and Dem platforming.
“She’s a conservative Christian,” they spat derisively while congratulating themselves on their inclusivity.
People online and people in my real life tried to pick fights with me, or at least tell me what an idiot I was or how misinformed and unkind. Or worse, they simply stopped speaking to me, looking through me as if I didn’t exist anymore.
To say I was unprepared for the hostility would be a grave understatement.
Why did I do it? How did it happen?
It happened like this: I was walking the dog through the neighborhood one morning in August when I realized I was avoiding something God was telling me to do. This is how most of us all are, all the time—we go to work, we get our chores done, we scroll the feed or watch the news, we text our mom/kids/friends and remind them what’s coming up on the calendar—too busy to actually consider our place in the universe.
Humans are terribly tiny and insignificant, but that story is just the beginning. We are tiny and insignificant and yet we “hold eternity in our hearts”—not nothing.
The responsibility of holding eternity in one’s heart makes us stand out above the swimming and crawling and flying creatures, the dog that needs a walk and a bone to chew. We are born to ponder and pontificate, just as the Creator intended.
And maybe even more interestingly—eternity is set like a precious gemstone in our hearts but without the possibility of understanding it.
Why would God do that? Why would he make us so tiny and dumb but expect us to know or care about anything with eternal qualities? And yet—not exactly dumb and not exactly tiny, because how could He be that way when my enemies in life call me those very things?
God, what exactly do you expect from me?
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives every life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
Acts 17:24-27
He marked out our appointed times in history, and He did it so that, in whatever culture, climate, time, space we are planted, we sprout and grow, searching for Light. He did it so we would encounter Him, the only being that makes living worthwhile.
And somehow, inevitably, it gets us in precarious situations—if we allow it.
God put eternity in our hearts with a profound desire for (yet profound inability to completely grasp) a risky relationship with Him.
So there with my dog tugging on the leash on our dirt road, the weight of responsibility crushed me into submission. God pegged my place in the universe, pinned me down with his thumb by my shirtsleeves. I turned around immediately and walked home.
We aren’t programmed to just wake up and obey like there is no other option. Maybe this is why it feels God is harsh with us sometimes, why He sends sickness and terror and insecurity—it’s because He’s given us all the clues but we’re still unwilling to bend until our faithless, self-determined probability models agree with His better interests for us.
His Kingdom come. His will be done, even on earth, even with the punies like me. It’s a cyclical, familial thing. A grain of wheat falls to the ground, another sprouts. Bravery begets bravery. The father passes it to the son, the son grows into a father and passes it to his son.
How it pleases the Father to dwell in the insignificant and to press us into His likeness!
Paul says,
“…so that in everything he might have supremacy. God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in him (Christ) and through him to reconcile to himself all things..”
Colossians 1:18-20
And not only is He please to do His work though Jesus and bring reconciliation to us, but now we are redeemed we are divinely appointed to offer this reconciliation to others.
So we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
2 Corinthians 5:20
Friend, do not think yourself so puny, so small, so insignificant. He is not far from any one of us.
