Leaving Eden

Album: Leaving Eden (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the title track of Contemporary Christian musician Brandon Heath's third studio album. Heath penned the song with country music Lee Thomas Miller whose credits include the #1 country hits "The World" and "I'm Still a Guy" for Brad Paisley and "You're Gonna Miss This" for Trace Adkins.
  • In our interview with Brandon Heath, he told us the story of the song. Said Heath: "The idea was borne out of a conversation with my counselor. There's a guy that meets with a bunch of us in Nashville, his name is Al. And I sat down with Al one day and he mentioned mourning the loss of Eden. And I'd never really thought about that. That's way in the past and it was somebody else's problem. But it really was my problem and your problem and everybody else that followed, because it was kind of the beginning of our separation, if you want to call it, from God. And later Jesus would arrive and everything would be set right.

    But there was this birthplace of all things going awry. And so for me, I'd never really thought about it, but I needed to mourn the loss of Eden, because I feel the effects of it. I feel the effects of living in an imperfect world. And the easiest way to see that is to watch the news. But the reality is there are good things happening in the world that you don't often hear about and they don't always make great sensational news stories so you don't hear about them.

    I didn't want to depress anybody, but I think it's good to look at the state of the world and say, Well, this is the world that we live in. But then also to look at Eden like Ground Zero; it's where everything changed. But we can't stay there; we should mourn what we lost there, but we have to move on. And we make our own decisions and our own choices, that's another great gift that God gave us. But that's kind of what I was thinking."
  • Heath has applied the song's message in his own life by limiting the time he spends online and, instead, putting energy into cultivating relationships with both God, and people. "I want to go to God and not to Google," he quipped to Crosswalk. "I feel like we've replaced God with so many things, and I just want him back—not that he's gone anywhere—but I want my allegiance to God back."

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