There is a story of a youth named Adrian. He lived surrounded by abundance: music at his fingertips, endless information on glowing screens, opportunities for travel and pleasure that previous generations could scarcely imagine. Yet he felt a hollow ache that nothing seemed to fill. He moved from distraction to distraction, but beneath it all lay a deeper question he could never quite silence: Is this all there is? One evening, standing beneath a clear night sky, Adrian was struck by the vastness of the stars and felt at once small and infinite. He whispered into the darkness, unsure to whom he spoke: Why do I long for more than the world can give?
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV)
This verse captures a paradox at the center of human existence. On the one hand, everything is beautiful in its time: the rhythms of life, the seasons, the joys and sorrows. On the other hand, eternity presses upon us. We long for something more than time, something beyond the cycle of seasons. Yet we cannot grasp it fully: “no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” We are suspended between finitude and infinity.
Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensées: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing, but only by God.” He described the human condition as infinite desire trapped in finite limits, an abyss that only the Infinite can fill.
Karl Rahner, the Catholic theologian of the 20th century, called the human being “the hearer of the Word.” By this he meant that our very structure as persons is oriented toward transcendence, toward receiving the self-communication of God. We are not merely finite creatures seeking survival; we are beings with an openness to mystery that nothing finite can exhaust.
Emmanuel Levinas, though writing outside of Christian theology, likewise pointed to the infinite: for him, the human encounter with the Other, the face of another person, confronts us with infinity, a demand and a depth that cannot be reduced to categories or totalized by our concepts.
Charles Taylor, analyzing modern secular society, observed that even in an age where belief is contested, people remain haunted by what he calls the “sense of fullness.” We pursue experiences that hint at transcendence, through art, love, music, activism, even consumerism, because we still long for something beyond mere immanence. Ecclesiastes names this haunting: eternity has been set in the heart. We feel it even when we cannot name it.
Adrian’s question beneath the stars is not unique. It is the question of every age. Why do finite beings reach for infinity? Why are we tormented by longing that nothing here can satisfy? The Teacher answers simply: because God placed eternity within us. The ache is not an error but a sign. The tragedy, however, is that we cannot fathom it. We sense the infinite, but we cannot master it. Our philosophies, our theologies, our sciences can gesture toward it, but the mystery remains.
Some try to resolve the ache by denying it. If we tell ourselves that desire for eternity is illusion, we may silence the restlessness for a time. But it reappears in unexpected ways: in the melancholy after success, in the unease beneath pleasure, in the strange hunger for more even when all needs are met. Others seek to resolve it by distraction, filling every moment with noise and novelty. But the silence of the heart eventually returns.
The Teacher does not advise denial or distraction. He names the paradox and leaves us within it. Everything is beautiful in its time; yet eternity is set within us. To live wisely is not to resolve the paradox but to inhabit it truthfully. Augustine teaches us to see the restlessness as a compass pointing to God. Pascal warns us not to fill the abyss with diversions but to face it honestly. Rahner insists that our openness to mystery is not an accident but our deepest identity. Levinas shows us that eternity touches us in the infinite demand of the Other’s face. Taylor reminds us that even in a secular age, the longing for fullness cannot be extinguished.
The lesson here is subtle: do not despise your longing for eternity. It is not a flaw to be fixed but a gift to be received. It unsettles because it cannot be satisfied by finite things, but that is precisely its purpose. It teaches you not to mistake the provisional for the ultimate, the partial for the whole. The ache is not proof of failure but of destiny.
Adrian’s story ends not with resolution but with awakening. He still lives among screens and schedules, but he no longer expects them to silence the abyss within. When he feels the ache, he does not rush to fill it with distractions. Instead, he allows it to turn his attention upward, outward, beyond. He learns that the hunger for eternity is itself a kind of prayer.
And perhaps that is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3:11: to teach us that the human heart is too vast for the world, because it was made for eternity. The longing that unsettles us is not our enemy. It is the thread that ties us to God.