Philip Yancey's Blog

Learning to Write

I’ve recently begun a book about writing.  Now and then I’ll include a brief excerpt from this work in progress as a blog post. These days, everybody is a writer.  Several billion of us connect daily through a variety of social media platforms and email programs.  For the first time in history, something you write ... Read more

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Miracle on the River Kwai

The classic movie starring Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai, depicts life in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. This 1957 movie was fictional, but the more recent movie To End All Wars tells the true story of Ernest Gordon, a British Army captain captured at sea by the Japanese at ... Read more

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Word Play

Visitors to my Facebook page and website have proved that they love words. Here’s a test: Do you know what an eponym is? Homonyms are words with more than one meaning, such as rock, or fall. Synonyms mean nearly the same thing as another word, while antonyms mean the opposite. Acronyms combine the initial letters ... Read more

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Who Cares?

I’ve been watching an argument play out on news channels and the Internet. Bono, the Irish singer who leads the rock band U2, has been appearing on talk shows and podcasts, urging Americans to restore some of the foreign aid projects that have been canceled. This stirred up memories of my visits to faith-based clinics and hospitals around the world...

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Lessons from an Owl

One day Carl Safina, an internationally celebrated conservationist and ecologist, came across a bedraggled baby owl near death, its feathers matted with fly eggs. He named the owlet Alfie and tenderly nursed it back to life. Over the next few years he kept a record of his efforts to help the young screech owl learn to fly, ... Read more

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A Political Tightrope

A few weeks ago I posted a note from Eastern Canada: “As believers, help us to understand what is going on in your country with your present government as we try to process it all. The ‘church’ and its leaders are silent! We are so confused as to why no one is speaking up? Can ... Read more

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Polishing Mirrors for Heaven

I have visited Russia twice. The first time, in 1991, I found a nation in deep chaos. The Soviet Union was rapidly disintegrating, and that year’s news featured a failed coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev and the resulting power struggle led by Boris Yeltsin. Ultimately, Yeltsin would triumph over Russia’s diehard communists, after leading a ... Read more

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Cosmic Faith

Each year, as the period of Lent approaches, I turn to John’s poignant account of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. The pace slows as the apostle devotes almost a quarter of his Gospel to this one intimate gathering of Jesus’ closest friends. The contrast in moods between Jesus and his disciples could hardly be ... Read more

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God’s Masterpiece

More than two centuries before the Reformation, a theological debate broke out pitting the premier theologian Thomas Aquinas against an upstart Franciscan priest from Britain, John Duns Scotus. The heart of the debate circled around the question, “Would the event we celebrate at Christmas have occurred if humanity had not disobeyed God?” Like most theologians, ... Read more

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I Am Not Dead

I first came across the “Heartbreaking News” of my death on a YouTube video. A suspiciously artificial-sounding voice reported that I had passed away on October 6 due to complications from stomach cancer. Hmm, that’s news to me, I thought, recalling the misquote attributed to Mark Twain: “The report of my death has been grossly ... Read more

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