One of the most vivid images from my early involvement in the great work of God in the Fiji Islands is that of the river that bordered the Bible School property at Seniwaloa. To reach the Bible School the men and women coming to train had to cross the river. It became a symbolic line of demarcation – on one side was the world they were leaving behind, and across the river was a life sacrificed for the honour of serving Christ’s great cause in all the world.

 In Ecclesiastes we read, He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that (or ‘without which’) no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Eternity is very big. Eternity reaches further than man on earth has ever seen or imagined. Eternity is big in every dimension. It has no boundaries of time. It has no limits in space. Job once described the creation, he said of God:

He stretches out the north over empty space, He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the water in the thick clouds, Yet the clouds are not broken under it. He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and dark. He stirs up the sea with His power, by His Spirit He adorned the heavens ...

 We have a large oil painting at home that we commissioned an artist to create; it’s colours are vivid and deep, it’s not contained by a frame, it has no objects in it whereby those who look at it might gage some sense of size or perspective – and inscribed across it is the next statement Job makes here in Chapter 26, having described the majesty and the vastness of God’s creative power, he says ... These are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him!  (Job 26:   - 14). If that is so ... then how unbelievably immense, how wonderful and wonder-filled is the realm the Bible simply calls “eternity”. And this eternity God has put in our hearts, without which no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

 During the days of Nehemiah and Ezra an unusual discovery was made. For seventy years the people of Israel had been a captive nation, their Temple destroyed, Jerusalem’s walls utterly broken down, their towns left in ruins. At the time of the city’s destruction, the nation’s prophets had declared that God would restore them to all they had once known, the nation would be rebuilt, and the people would return again in their hearts to God and again experience his blessing and favour. Now through Nehemiah and Ezra the words of those prophets were being fulfilled. Ezra was overseeing the restoration of the Temple and it’s worship,  and Nehemiah was leading the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls and gates. This was restoration, revival and return to God’s blessing for the nation.

During these days an unusual discovery was made. In ancient scrolls of the Pentateuch record was found of a forgotten celebration. Once a year, they read, everyone was commanded to leave their usual houses and live in shelters that they called  ‘booths’ or ‘tabernacles’ for a week. (Nehemiah 8:13 – 18). For one week every year they left their houses and possessions, becoming  unattached from all the trappings of regular life, they stopped working, they interrupted the progress of their careers, and disconnected themselves from all the stuff of their lives. And the mood and emotion of that week was that of great joy. They celebrated, making offerings with their harvests of oil and wine. They feasted, and they did it with laughter, song and dance. What was this all about? Why did they do this?

Firstly, they were reminding themselves of a truth they lived by … that God had something far better for them than all the houses, the luxuries and material possessions that the wealthiest of the wealthy could acquire, and that there was coming a day in which God would give them bodies far better than the healthiest of the healthy could ever know. As Christians we possess this great hope … I’m going to leave this body, and in the resurrection live in a brand new glorious body, one that is part of a kingdom of which the things of earth are only a dim shadow. In Christ I’m richer than the richest of the rich.

 Secondly, they were declaring to God their glorious unattachment to the world and all it had to offer – they might own houses and possessions, but those things did not own them. They were “crossing a river”! Concerning the rich young ruler we read he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions.  He was attached ... these Israelites were saying ‘we’re unattached’, this world is not my home.

 Thirdly, they were reaffirming their belief that come the end of their lives, they would take nothing with them (except their character, their God-blessed relationships and the fruit of their lives). As regularly as once per year, God wanted them reminded that this all comes to an end and only that which is of eternal qualities (gold, silver, precious stones of the soul) remains.

 Here they were sitting in their little makeshift house, like a bivouac, everything that the world called precious was somewhere else. Living like a cyclone had blown everything away. God was putting eternity in their hearts. When the people of Israel were in captivity they lost that awareness, they lost that eternal perspective – the things they owned in the world had become their world.

But when God puts eternity in the heart of a man or a woman, it seems such a small thing to them that they would go out to the mountains and bring palm branches and the branches of leafy trees and make booths (Nehemiah 8:15) ... then leaving all that others call precious behind ... make that their life! David Livingstone said, “Forbid that we should ever consider the holding of a commission from the King of kings a sacrifice, so long as other men esteem the service of an earthly government as an honour. I am a missionary, heart and soul. God himself had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation I am, or wish to be, but in His service I hope to live. In it I wish to die. I still prefer poverty and missions service to riches and ease. This is my choice.”