An honest look at life's difficult questions
Phillip Yancey is a student of pain. He has studied it under some true masters, like Dr Paul Brand, whose life long work was to be physician to lepers in India and Louisiana. From Dr Brand, whose patients biggest problem was that they could feel no pain, Yancey got his perspective.
Yancey is a brilliant writer but beyond that he is totally honest. He admits his writing reflects his own search for peace inspite of the horrors that are too real in this world. He is also honest about the religious community frequent failure to be truly helpful when facing a suffering individual.
If you want a book that looks pain squarely in the eye and deals with it, with no trite phrases and no sugar coating, you will appreciate this book. Yancey leaves one somehow strangely satisfied with the need for pain and the one answer God gives to help us through it. This book and others by Yancey helped me hang on through kidney failure and 2/12 years of dialysis until deliverance came. If you're struggling with suffering -your own or others -this book with truly meet you where you are.