Recovering Eden Quotes

“Instead of rehearsing imaginary dooms or fortunes or spinning his wheels in idle speculations, he rather needs to attend to what is in front of him in the lot God has given him with the daily rhythm that morning and evening provides. Why? Because who but God knows how it will all turn out?”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“It’s Saturday morning; we wake up; whatever choice we make for how to use the day makes our tender conscience restless and guilt ridden with a sense of wrong or waste. The Preacher frees us. When it comes to our tending our lot with our spouse and family, our work, our food, and our place, God has already told us that he approves of this use of time. When Adam and Eve loved each other, cultivated the garden, took time for meals, and cared for the place with God, it was enough in God’s eyes.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“Wine can give us a “merry heart” (Eccl. 9:7). Wine “gladdens life” (Eccl. 10:19). But wine is a poor lover, “a mocker,” “a brawler,” that leads us astray (Prov. 20:1).”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. (Eccl. 1:8) Nothing that we see or hear under the sun can bring us the gain for which we strive. Sunshine is pleasant and happy. But it cannot satisfy us. Everything we sense leaves us restless. Like a child two days after Christmas, or lovers two days after holding hands for the first time, we grow bored even with good things. We always want more.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun” (Eccl. 11:7). When I was a boy, I listened to a popular song and gladly sang along. The song described how the sunshine can brighten not only our days but our hearts and minds.2”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“Pride, anger, naivete, and nostalga are like Stalin's communists waiting to deliver Poland out of the hands of Hitler's Nazis. What looks like a rescue only recovers and repeats the oppression. When God's people walk out of God's house and respond to the folly they find under the sun by becoming foolish themselves, there is little wonder why it can seem that God is nowhere to be found in the news, our neighborhoods, or our daily toil. We become like firefighters who, upon entering a burning building, disdain the water hoses and instead turn confidently to blowtorches and try helplessly to douse what blazes.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“We learn a wisdom kind of outreach, an evangelism or testimony as those who are human beings wrestling with it all. It is as if the Preacher causes us to put off our religious persona and get honest about our being human in a fallen world. Likewise,”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“But the Preacher isn’t God. In fact, the Preacher, or his namesake, Solomon, did not live up to the wisdom he had learned and taught. “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done” (1 Kings 11:6). With this, we are invited to consider one last truth in this vain life under the sun. Every human wise man has fallen short of his own true wisdom. The Preacher cannot save the oppressed and the oppressor whose plight he has so deftly and humanly entered. The Preacher cannot save himself.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“We are selective with data. We like to reduce complexity, to simplify it. Some of us like to reduce disquiets, because we want everything to be happy. Others of us reduce delights because we are more familiar with sadness and hardship. The Preacher embodies a way of hearing that allows both to remain. We are created to enter mystery and contradiction with the fear of God and let it sit.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“Ecclesiastes offers an exceptional voice to remind us who are like Job’s friends or Jesus’ disciples that we cannot walk out into our neighborhoods under the sun and hand out a “one size fits all” shirt.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

“The Wisdom Literature needs Ecclesiastes then, in order to keep us from entrusting ourselves to trite formulas under the sun. It is not that Proverbs ignores exceptions. It too makes plain that rules aren’t enough and that context matters for how we apply wisdom.”
― Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes