Even Better Than Eden by Nancy Guthrie reminds the reader that we don’t really want to go back to the Garden of Eden…even if we could correct things…because what lies ahead is better than anything we could dare ask or imagine. Living the Christian life means truly understanding what it means to image Christ. This book was really helpful and I enjoyed reading it slowly. I highlighted several things while reading and posted those notes below…
- And if Jesus experienced a thorn in the flesh, and we’ve said that it is our desire for our lives to be conformed to his, joined to his, why are we so surprised and even resentful when we feel the pain of a thorn in our flesh, when we experience the agonies of life lived in a world of wilderness? p. 27
- At the end of the Bible’s story we find the same symbol of this life we long for that was there at the beginning–the tree of life. Here’s the promise from Jesus himself: “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7). The tree of life is not simply a thing of the past. It’s a promise for our future. p. 31
- God had put this tree in the garden as a test that would give Adam and Eve the opportunity to live out genuine faith and obedience. But when the Serpent came along, the had his own idea about the tree. He turned the tree into a temptation and a trap, setting himself up as judge over God’s goodness, generosity, and integrity, saying to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). p. 34
- To image God is to do what God would do, and God always does what is right. p. 47
- To image God is to do what is true and to think the way God thinks. p. 47
- God has given us the gift of a day– one day different from all the other days in our week–to push away from the table of the world that fills us up with its amusements and technology and weighs us down with its expectations and commitments. This gift invites us, instead, to pull up a chair at the table where God himself wants to fill us up with himself and to take on himself all the things that are weighing on us. p. 94
- The writer of Hebrews wrote to first-century believers, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest” (Hebrews 4:9-11). p. 105