Eldredge is now one of my favorite authors. I have devoured each of his books that I have read. Like water for a thirsty soul, they touch a deep inner part of me that craves something more. Desire is something we often try to avoid, for too often we are hurt by not getting what we desire. In this book, desire is seen not as the enemy but as what we must cultivate for our life that is to come. It cannot be found in this life. We were made for more.

"...basic commitment to find life here and now. It is a commitment nearly all of us share, at a far deeper level than we'd like to admit. There's something just a little hurt and angry in all of us as we find that life is not coming through."

"Devise your plan. It will be thwarted." - God

"We had it all, but we threw it away. By mistrusting God's heart, by reaching to take control of what we wanted, Adam and Eve set in motion a process in our hearts, a desperate grasping that can be described only as addiction."

"Every day we reenact the Fall as we turn in our desire to the very things that will destroy us."

"...we are desperate for life, and we come to believe that we must arrange for it as best we can, or no one will."

"It can't be done. By this I remember that I can't arrange for the life I prize. I am not fully healed yet of my addictions and my tendency - which seems so second nature - to arrange for my own little Eden now. To say again and again, 'It can't be done,' does not discourage me; quite the contrary, it frees my heart from the grasping and plotting and fretting over my life, which always accompany arranging. It reminds me to let it go."

"How easy it is to slip back into thinking that it's now or never; that if it's not here, it's not at all. The life I prize is coming."

"And thinking of life as a journey reminds me to stop trying to set up camp and call it home."