“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: ALSO HE HATH SET THE WORLD IN THEIR HEART, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
It appears to me that the emphasis on this verse encompasses the world that now is and the world to come. I think this, partly, because it’s in this world/life that man is to see the handiwork of God in His creation, thus leading man to contemplate the world to come — his eternal state.
Man tends to think he is the be-all and end-all of his self-existence. However God, through His creation, endeavors to get man’s focus off of himself and on to His creative handiwork. Man is to look around him and conclude that there has to be a Creator.
But much like everything else, man’s focus minimizes what he can’t comprehend and seeks for the answers and meaning to life within himself. Man gets Deified while God gets dethroned. This has been the pattern since the beginning in the Garden. Satan put forth the challenge that somehow God was not trustworthy. In doing so, he cast doubt upon the very character of God and all He has done.
But God won’t be dethroned.
God takes the initiative to get man’s attention. Hence, God “hath set the world In Their Heart.” This is an act, done by God, within the heart of each person that has ever lived or will live. There’s an innate, spiritual aspect to man that he can’t quite put his finger on. He doesn’t know how it’s there or why it’s there. But it’s this realization which sets man on the quest to know why and to find out it’s source.
I’ve had family members in the past tell me that there is no life after death - “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” They believed that once a person was dead there was nothing else. I would always tell them they couldn’t possibly believe that. The simple fact is that “He hath set” things within His creation to display who He is and to draw His creation to Him. The very life essence within each person has been placed there by God the Creator.
When somebody makes/creates something it inevitably reflects the creative force behind it. What kind of Creator would God be if He did any less? God has “time stamped” His essence upon His creation. You can’t get away from it.
But …
That’s what man spends his entire life in this “world” trying to do. Why? Because to acknowledge God as Creator is to admit the need for the creature to submit to the Creator. And that seems to be the hurdle man stumbles over in every generation. However God, being the gracious God that He is, constantly seeks to draw His creation to Himself. Few will respond. Many will not.
That makes me think of Matthew 7:13-14 — 13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
If you know Yeshua as your Savior, if you’ve been made a new creature/creation in Him, you have the wonderful opportunity of reflecting your Creator through your life. And in so doing, you are a part of God’s handiwork that is displaying, for all the world to see, the reality of the living God.
That’s pretty awesome.