Lily Lin

“I would argue the desire to be great was put there by the Creator himself. After all, we’re made in his image.

The problem is this desire, which in its embryonic, innocent state is so, so right, is quickly warped and soiled and bent out of shape by the ego.

We devolve from a desire to be great to a desire to be thought of as great.

From a desire to serve the weak to a desire to be served by the weak.

From a desire to save the world to a desire to have it.”
― John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human

“Yes, Jesus was the template for what Godness looks like. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus of Nazareth. But the mystery of the incarnation is that he was also the template for what real, true humanness looks like. He’s the Son of God and he’s the “son of Adam.” If you want to know what a human being, fully awake and alive, ruling over the world as a conduit for the Creator God’s love looks like in flesh and blood — then look at Jesus.”
― John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.

“When you think of Eden, don’t think of a public park with a lawn, a play set, and a flowerbed or two, where God hands Adam a lawnmower and says, Keep it tidy, will ya? Think of a violent, untamed wilderness teeming with beauty, but no infrastructure, no roads, no bridges, no cities, no civilization, and God says, Go make a world. Adam wasn’t a landscape-maintenance employee. He was an explorer, a cartographer, a gardener, a designer, an architect, a builder, an urban planner, a city-maker.”
― John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.

“To borrow from the language of Jesus, you gotta figure what the “work the Father gave you to do” is. And then you need to learn the art of saying no. To good things. A smart man once said, “Good is the enemy of best.”17”
― John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.