Quotes from Philip Yancey

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem [...] how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." The disciples had proposed that Jesus call down fire on unrepentant cities; in contrast, Jesus uttered a cry of helplessness, an astonishing "if only" from the lips of the Son of God. He would not force himself on those who were not willing.

Though forgiveness is never easy, and may take generations, what else can break the chains that enslave people to their historical past?

I can view prayer as a way of asking a timeless God to intervene more directly in our time-bound life on earth. (Indeed, I do so all the time, praying for the sick, for the victims of tragedy, for the safety of the persecuted church.)

Our society arbitrarily defines health as the capacity for work and the capacity for enjoyment, but "true health is something quite different. True health is the strength to live, the strength to suffer, and the strength to die. Health is not a condition of my body; it is the power of my soul to cope with the varying condition of that body.

Prayer is a subversive act performed in a world that constantly calls faith into question.

My feelings of God's presence — or God's absence — are not the presence or the absence.

Grace has its own power, even in international politics.

Fear is the universal primal response to suffering. And yet beyond doubt it is also the single greatest "enemy of recovery.

The Christian sees the world as a transitional home badly in need of rehab, and we are active agents in that project.

As the noted physiologist Harold G. Wolf puts it, "Hope, faith and a purpose in life, is medicinal. This is not merely a statement of belief but a conclusion proved by meticulously controlled scientific experiment.

Afraid salvation is a vaccination that will not take

I do "good works" for my wife not in order to earn credit but to express my love for her. Likewise, God wants me to serve "in the new way of the Spirit": not out of compulsion but out of desire.