Acts 17:28 (NIV) “For in him we live and move and have our being.”
The Apostle Paul said this to some philosophers in Athens. Prior to this he had been walking through the city and noticed that it was filled with idols made of wood and stone carved by men.
He was disturbed that they were worshiping these man-made things and went to the synagogue to teach about the good news of Jesus. A group of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers wanted to know more, so he told them that while he was wandering through their city, he noticed an inscription on an altar that said, “To an Unknown God.”
He went on to suggest that the unknown god was the God who created the heavens and the earth, the one who created humankind with purpose and worth.
Then he said, “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
Acts 17:27 (NIV)
God wants us to know him. He is not hiding from us. He created everything in the heavens and the earth and his whole creation shouts out to us that there is a Creator who put it all in motion and longs for us to seek him and know him.
Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher wrote this, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each [person] which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”
