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world too small to satisfy our hearts


"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."  (Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV)

"If the ills of humanity were caused by culture, they could certainly be cured in no other way than by culture.  But the ills are native to the human heart, which always remain the same, and culture only brings these out.  With all its wealth and power, it only shows that the human heart, in which God has put eternity, is so huge that all the world is too small to satisfy it.  Human beings are in search of another and better redemption than culture can give them.  They are looking for lasting happiness, an enduring eternal good.  They are thirsting for a redemption that saves them physically as well as spiritually, for time but also for eternity."   

(Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, III:326-327)

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