“Where the Light Fell” is Philip Yancey’s long-awaited, stunning, self-revelatory memoir, a deeply personal, extremely arresting and heart-gripping book, painfully honest, raw, transparent and vulnerable. It is a story of unimaginable pain and divine redemption, of lives shattered to smithereens, yet beautifully healed by God’s redeeming grace. Yancey’s inspiring ministry of grace-filled empathy was born from the wounds he sustained in early childhood. His gifts were shaped by scars to give him stars in God’s firmament.
Yancey reveals the sordid details of his impoverished upbringing and his heart-wrenching discovery of a tragic family secret, revealed to the whole world but hidden from himself and his brother. This set him on a persistent quest to uncover the truth. In his most personal book yet, he examines the very nature of love and how love still finds us against all odds.
Although remnants from Yancey’s childhood, in the modern form of racial hostility, political division and culture wars, have resurfaced in today’s social and political divides, at its very heart and core, this is a book about finding solace and healing in God’s loving arms. No pain and loss is ever wasted in God’s divine plan for our lives. In Yancey’s childhood and growth into adulthood, “Where the Light Fell” illuminated the darkness and chased away the shadows, making him into the person God intended him to be.
In his searing, heart-rending memoir, Philip Yancey finally reveals his relentless quest to identify true faith. He learned the priceless value and true worth of grace because it was denied to him. He discovered that to find true peace is to ask God for the seemingly impossible: a Christ-like love, the God-given power to forgive, and joyful hope to face life head-on, confident that God who is with us today, will be with us tomorrow. In the final outcome, Yancey’s hard-won spiritual awakening is miraculously given by God, who loves him as the apple of His eye.
Yancey’s life story is a deep exhale of a heart’s passionate cry for relief from trauma, inflicted by the people around him, with nobody to shield him from things a child should never see. Yancey certainly experienced some of the worst and some of the best, yet remained intact through it all. Here was God’s protection at its very best.
Although Yancey wrote so much about pain and suffering, hardly anyone knows about the story of his childhood, which he finally shares openheartedly, truth be told to the world. This book is a well crafted memoir, with characters one identifies with, hardships to be sorrowed over, triumphs to be rejoiced about, a soul-stirring, heart-moving commentary on America – after World War II. “Where the Light Fell” strikes a profoundly deep and very personal chord in one’s heart. I highly recommend it to all avid readers who wish to know how Philip Yancey grew out of his turbulent childhood into the graceful servant of God he is today.
Compiled by Miriam Jacob
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ANOINTED TO SERVE - Miriam Jacob 
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