Where the Light Fell

by Philip Yancey

Libby audiobook 11 hours

read by the author

Published: 2021

Genre: memoir

This book is one I could write pages and pages about but will keep brief.

1. I vaguely recognized "Yancey" as the name of a Christian powerhouse. I didn't really know much about the author at all.

2. As I listened, I thought he was NOT a Christian and the Yancey I've heard of before was his dad (whose own story is fascinating but he died in his young 20s from polio).

3. Wow. Just wow. When he shared the experience that changed his life, I cried. (It's toward the end of the book!)

The mom. Oh . . . how painful. She claimed to not have sinned in twelve years. She meant well, but raised her boys in such a way as to make them reject faith in God instead of embracing faith. She said and did some truly hateful things. It breaks my heart.

Rudyard Kipling's If - have I read this? I need to!

The South, the Civil War, what children are taught in school . . . scary. Educators, parents, society all have power in shaping kids' perspectives.

Summer camp and the seventeen box turtles. Shame. So sad!

Lester Roloff - preaching against . . . (not sure what my note means, but again it made me sad that some Christians use their zeal to hurt others rather than bring peace, healing, and wholeness in Christ.) (I just followed an internet rabbit trail of info about him. . . ) I think that Roloff was preaching against the Revised Standard Version of the Bible . . . as in, this is not a translation you should read . . . I wonder if he lived to see The Message version!

Interesting that a MEMOIR is a person's story about their life. Yancey was open, vulnerable, and repentant toward the end of his story. He was born in 1949 and his dad died when he was a year old. His mother and his brother Marshall were the central figures in his life.

 

I loved loved loved when he met Janet at college!!!

Now I want to read some of his other books! 

 

Oh - I also jotted a note that when he was rejecting God, Yancey saw God as a "cosmic bully" if He existed at all. Again, it made me so sad that his upbringing caused him to move away from God instead of toward Him.

 

His brother Marshall's story breaks my heart. 

 

I really want to read more of Philip Yancey's books!