Accident for popular speaker puts life in perspective
by Doris Fleck  

Philip Yancey had to take his own words to heart when his Ford Explorer slid on an icy road in Colorado and rolled five times down a steep embankment, breaking his neck.  

"I didn’t know book tours could be that hazardous," quipped the popular speaker and author during a personal interview at Break Forth Canada at the end of January.  

This accident caused him to miss the Canadian leg of the tour a few years ago, so it was all the better to see Yancey, his trademark afro tinged with white, addressing over 14,000 people at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton.  

The popular writer of Disappointment With God, and Where Is God When It Hurts, said immediately after the accident, he lay strapped to a backboard for seven hours, while doctors tried to determine if a bone fragment had punctured his carotid artery.  

With a plane ready to fly him to Denver for emergency surgery, one doctor truthfully confided, "If the artery has been punctured, you won’t make it to Denver." Handing him a cell phone the doctor suggested, "Call the people you love and tell them ‘goodbye,’ just in case."  

With cell phone in hand, Yancey said, "I gave no thought to how much money I make, how many books I sell, what kind of car I drive. I decided only three things matter ultimately: Whom do I love? How have I lived my life? Am I ready for whatever is next?"  Speaking to the interdenominational crowd at Break Forth, Yancey said when it comes to suffering, "Christians don’t get a free ride. We don’t get a space suit that makes us invulnerable."  

He maintained God does not cause these bad things to happen, He "is in the recycling business. He takes bad things and turns them into good things."  

Philip Yancey

Yancey said he felt a real peace, with no regrets as he faced death. This experience changed him, giving him a renewed love for simple pleasures, and making common worries seem irrelevant.  

In his travels to different countries, Yancey often asks random people on the street what their definition of a Christian is. Words like ‘uptight,’ ‘judgmental’ and ‘rule-oriented’ come up often. But he has never heard Christians referred to as ‘the ones who show grace to others.’  

Grace is an incredible message of the Church. "We deserve God’s anger, instead we get love. We deserve punishment, instead we get forgiveness," he said.  

With a world mentality that says, "You bomb me, I’ll bomb you!" Yancey said, "I wish the Church in Canada…would be known for that counter message because the world is in desperate need of grace."  

He maintained that the greatest strength of the Church is the diversity of believers who fellowship together, "People of different ages, people of different economic groups, different cultures, different races."  

With the world mired in division and polarity, Yancey explained that unity among believers will make Christianity stand out.  

"That’s what I want from the Church," he said. "So often the Church looks just like the rest of the world. The more we can demonstrate that unity and spirit of oneness that Jesus prayed for, the more the world will stand back and say, ‘Oh, they have something that we need.’ "