Philip Yancey’s Message of Grace

On a sunday in late February 2007, Philip Yancey was driving on a remote highway near Alamosa, Colorado. As he came around an icy curve, his Ford Explorer began to fishtail; the tire slipped off the asphalt and the Explorer tumbled down a hillside. The windows were blown out; skis, boots, luggage, and a laptop computer were strewn over the snow. Yancey suffered minor cuts and bruises on his face and limbs and a persistent nosebleed, but he also felt an intense pain in his neck. When an ambulance arrived, he was strapped onto a spinal board, his head was immobilized, and he was put in a neck brace. He was taken to a small-town hospital for a CAT scan. No radiologist was on duty, so the images had to be sent via internet to Australia; when the results came back, Yancey was told he had splintered his C3 vertebrae, although the break had not severed the spinal cord.