“Death can radically enable us to enjoy life. By relativizing all that we do in our days under the sun, death can change us from people who want to control life for gain into people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift. This is the main message of Ecclesiastes in a nutshell: life in God’s world is gift, not gain.”
― Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End
― Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End
“It was a question of steering Christian dogma between the Scylla of pantheism and the Charybdis of materialism and its logical conclusion, scepticism.”
― History in English Words
― History in English Words
“In fact, the ongoing and deepening contrast between the Jesus of the Gospels and popular cultural misconfigurations is the principal reason I have written this book. Jesus is far more beautiful than many have imagined. It all has to do with love, but not just any kind of love, but with holy love.” Jesus the Stranger: The Man from Galilee and the Light of the World, p. xviii.”
― Jesus the Stranger: The Man from Galilee and the Light of the World
― Jesus the Stranger: The Man from Galilee and the Light of the World
“Nobody who understands the amount of pain and energy which go to the creation of new instruments of thought can feel anything but respect for the philosophy of the Middle Ages.”
― History in English Words
― History in English Words
“Stop chasing the wind! Stop thinking the future will be better and easier. Stop thinking that if only things were different you would be a better person and that one day you will be a better father. You do not know the future or what lies around the corner, whether good or ill. Perhaps these are indeed the very best days of my life. Maybe I’ll be dead tomorrow. Live the life you have now instead of longing for the life you think you will have but which you actually cannot control at all. When we realize there is a middle way between being lazy in the here and now and busting a gut for the future, we find tranquility.”
― Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End
― Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End
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Karen’s 2025 Year in Books
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