I stood captivated as the tour guide explained the symbolism of a gold relief created by the pre-Columbian Incas. Carved into the artwork were many of the things they worshiped: the sun, moon, stars, trees, a rainbow. But at the very top was a large empty shape representing the “unknown god”, a deity they acknowledged but could not describe.

How fascinating, I thought. Just like the Athenians in the book of Acts.

Thousands of miles away and over a thousand years earlier, the people of Athens had also built an altar “to an unknown god.” The apostle Paul used this as a bridge to tell them about the One true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who they were searching for without realizing it. (Acts 17:22-31)

Throughout history, archaeologists have discovered that nearly every known culture has developed some form of worship. People have differed enormously about who or what is worthy of worship, but the impulse itself appears to be nearly universal.

But why?

Ecclesiastes 3:11 gives us a clue:

[God] has set eternity in the human heart.

God has placed within humanity an awareness that there is something beyond the physical world—an innate longing for meaning, beauty, purpose, justice, and eternity. We are made to seek something greater than ourselves because we were made for Someone greater than ourselves.

Psalm 90:10 reminds us of the brevity of our earthly lives:

Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

I distinctly remember my first transcendent thought. I was a teenager contemplating whether God was real and the idea of an afterlife. I thought of all the ways a person could die—a gunshot, a disease, a car accident, an injury. These things could destroy a body. But when I thought about the essence of who I was—my personality, my memories, my dreams, my emotions—it didn’t make sense to me that any of that would cease to exist because my physical body failed. Who I was would live on—must live on!

That realization settled something in me that there was more to life than what I could see or touch. For the first time, I deeply understood that my body and my soul were not the same. They could separate and one day I would in fact “fly away”.

Dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:7

These thoughts were not unique to me. Across civilizations and centuries, people have almost universally believed that death is not the end. Cultures have imagined the afterlife in very different ways, but the instinct that there is something beyond this life has been remarkably persistent.

Acts 17 tells us that God gives all people “life and breath and everything else,” and that He determines the times and places in which we would live so that people would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us.

Perhaps that is why God gave humanity the impulse to worship—not because He is hidden, but because He wants to be found.

Perhaps He placed this longing within us to get our attention—to break through our distractions and cause us to lift our eyes beyond this temporary world and consider our own mortality.

Perhaps He gave us the capacity for awe and wonder because He loves us and desires to draw us to Himself. Perhaps He placed eternity in our hearts because He knows we are broken and longs to restore us.

The God the Incas could not depict and the Athenians did not know is the God who has always known us. The God who formed us, gave us life and breath, and placed us in this moment of history is not far away. He invites us to seek Him with our whole hearts—and promises that when we do, we will find Him.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
I will be found by you,” declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 29:13–14