March 5, 2007 1:00 PM
Update on Phillip Yancey
Wow, what a writer! I think he got this on his website the next day, but it's more easily viewable at Christianity Today:
One of the things Yancey has affirmed for me is that my calling as a writer demands that I speak from my experience to share the things God has taught me. I'm impressed that he went to work immediately helping us find meaning. Part of his description of lying immobilized for seven hours in a strange town as they checked for possible paralysis and he waited for his wife to arrive from far away:
I stayed calm throughout, my pulse holding steady around 70. And as I lay there, contemplating what I had just been teaching in Los Alamos about prayer, and facing the imminent possibility of death for the first time, I felt very peaceful. I reflected on what a wonderful life I have had, with a life-giving marriage partner of 37 years, all but three of Colorado's 54 14,000-foot mountains under my belt, adventures in more than 50 countries, work that allows me both meaning and total freedom. Just that weekend I had heard again story after story of people who have been touched by one of my books. I looked back on my life and felt no regrets (well, I would like to get those last three "14ers" climbed). And as I thought of what may await me, I felt a feeling of great trust. No one raised in the kind of church environment I grew up in totally leaves behind the acrid smell of fire and brimstone, but I felt an overwhelming sense of trust in God. I have come to know a God of compassion and mercy and love. I have no clue what heaven or an afterlife will be like but I felt sustained by that trust. OK, the morphine drip was beginning to kick in too!
Don't you love the honesty and his humanity?
HT to Julie at Imajackson.
Love,
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