Philip Yancey speaks to Christian Today about his new book, A Companion in Crisis, a modern paraphrase of John Donne’s Devotions on Emergent Occasions, and the lessons he is still learning about why God allows suffering and how believers can accept it in their own life.
CT: Why did John Donne’s work resonate with you during the pandemic?
Philip: After the pandemic started, books started being published about God and the coronavirus, and God and the pandemic, but I wondered whether we could go back a little bit further and learn from the wisdom of the past rather than try and reinvent the wheel.
John Donne lived through a different pandemic 400 years ago and he wrote a classic of literature that has never been out of print since that time. It’s still on people’s lists of top 100 books ever written. So we’re not the first person to…
