God has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ~Ecclesiastes 3:11

It’s back.  I get it every now and again.  It comes and goes.  A vague dissatisfaction with life.  A sense that time is passing me by, a feeling that I’m spinning my wheels and not really making a difference.  It comes to me often in half formed or unasked questions:  So this is it?  This is my life?  This is why I’m here? 

Do you ever get that feeling?   

On the face of it, I know how ridiculous this is.  I am well aware of how blessed I am- a wonderful church, great friends, a loving spouse, four children, more “stuff” than I know what to do with.  With half the world living on less than $2 a day, what exactly am I dissatisfied with? 

Often thoughts like this are associated with triggers- a funeral, hearing of a cancer diagnosis or looking at old family photos and recognizing how fast my kids are growing up.  This most recent episode may have been sparked by marking the days until my upcoming birthday (number 44 in case you were wondering), catching a glimpse of the top of my head in a mirror and recognizing that I’m getting a little thicker around the middle!  “Vanity, thy name is Steve.”  Or, maybe it’s because I’ve been reading the book of Ecclesiastes. 

I think at the core, we all just want to matter.  To know, as Aristotle said, that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  That out of this crazy mix of relationships, responsibilities and routines we call ‘life’, God is forming something beautiful, something lasting, something eternal.  That earning a paycheck, shuttling the kids to swim practice, and mowing the lawn are not independent activities of little value, but are part of a ‘mosaic of meaning’ that God is weaving out of the fabric of our life.  That the extraordinary is almost always cloaked in the ordinary and God is advancing His kingdom in and through us- all of us who make up His body, His bride, His church, even if the ways seem small. 

Ecclesiastes says, “God has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” I’ve come to appreciate this Bible verse and embrace these times of mild introspection.  To me, it’s evidence that God has set eternity in my heart.  I am called to grapple with questions larger than myself, not so I can have some kind of mid-life crisis, buy a new sports car or sell everything and go start an organic chicken farm in the Shenandoah, but so I can center myself in God’s greater story and press into Him harder.  I may not be able to completely understand what God is up to, but I can trust Him.  He’s already around the next bend.