James H. Cagle
Guest Columnist
“All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecclesiastes 1:8 KJV).
Men are not genuinely happy until the inner man is completely satisfied. Not until the inner man finds meaning and fulfillment will he know peace, rest and contentment.
The eye and the ear are inlets into the inner man, the heart. With them, we take in the things of the world in our pursuit of happiness. Whatever object we saw or new philosophy or idea we heard, we took them in to see if they would quiet our soul and bring us completeness.
The driving forces behind our searching are curiosity and covetousness. Whatever our eyes desired, we kept not from them, and we received whatever fell upon our ears, in our never-ending quest for that which would make us whole.
It is not that the eye or the ear is never satisfied, for they are only sensory organs for the inner man and are used to feed the soul in our search for gratification and fullness. They can only sense what is visible, tangible, worldly and temporal. Therefore, it is the visible, temporal and material that never satisfies the soul. Solomon wrote, “Hell and destruction are never full: so the eyes of man are never satisfied” (Proverbs 27:20). Hell and the grave never reach the point where they say “enough” and don’t claim more victims. So, the eye of man never reaches the point where it says “enough” to the things the world has to offer. C.S. Lewis wrote in "Mere Christianity," “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Man is never satisfied with the things of the visible world. His heart can only be completely satisfied by the things of the invisible world. And the things of the invisible world are acquired through faith in Him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27). It is the invisible world, the unseen but not unknown world that we go to by faith and receive the invisible things that satisfy the longings of our heart. It is faith in the invisible that gives us victory over the visible (1 John 5:4). Fortunately, all the cravings of the human heart are satisfied in Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
The Christian is in this world but not of this world (John 15:19). They use the things of this world but no longer desire the things of the world (1 Corinthians 7:31). Their desires are met, and they are completely satisfied through their faith in the invisible Christ.