About the Book
Table of Contents:
Preface: A New Edition for a New Time
Part I: Image Bearers
1: Invisible Made Visible
2: Human Mirrors
Part II: One and Many
3: A Role in the Body
4: Diversity: The Richness of Life
5: Unity: The Sense of Belonging
6: The Ecstasy of Community
Part III: Outside and Inside
7: Skin: The Organ of Sensitivity
8: The Visible You
9: The Most Trustworthy Sense
10: Bone: A Necessary Frame
11: How Bones Grow
Part IV: Proof of Life
12: Blood: Life's Source
13: Wise Blood
14: Breath: Inspiration and Expiration
15: Body in Motion
Part V: The Language of Pain
16: A Sense of Protection
17: The Unifier
18: Chronic Pain
Part VI: The Body's CEO
19: Brain: The Enchanted Loom
20: Image Restored
21: Levels of Guidance
22: God's Likeness
23: A Presence
Discussion Guide, Joannie Degnan Barth and Bridget Woltman
About the Author :
Dr. Paul Brand (1914–2003) grew up in India, studied medicine in London, and practiced orthopedic surgery in India and the United States. He achieved world renown for his innovative techniques in the treatment of leprosy. He wrote Clinical Mechanics of the Hand, still considered a classic in the field of hand surgery, as well as The Gift of Pain (coauthored with Philip Yancey) and God's Forever Feast. Before his death in 2003, he received many honors, including the prestigious Albert Lasker Award and appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Philip Yancey has written twenty-five books. Early on he crafted best-selling books such as Disappointment with God and Where Is God When It Hurts? while also editing The Student Bible. More recently, he has explored central issues of the Christian faith, penning award-winning titles such as The Jesus I Never Knew, What's So Amazing About Grace?, and Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? Yancey's books have garnered thirteen Gold Medallion Awards from Christian publishers and booksellers. He currently has more than fifteen million books in print, published in over forty languages worldwide. Yancey worked as a journalist in Chicago for some twenty years, editing the youth magazine Campus Life while also writing for a wide variety of magazines including Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, National Wildlife, and Christianity Today. In 1992 he and his wife, Janet, moved to the foothills of Colorado where they live now.
Review :
"A deeply meaningful book and a much-needed corrective to our opinions about the natural world, what membership means--in our bodies and in the body."
--Sheldon Vanauken, author of A Severe Mercy
"An unusual medical, biological, and spiritual work. A great appreciation of the human body, life, and belief in God fills this book."
--Joseph E. Murray, Nobel Laureate, The New England Journal of Medicine
"Beautifully written, absorbing, and highly readable (even for the nonbiologically inclined), the book is tremendously successful in developing a metaphor the New Testament uses more than thirty times to refer to the universal church. The reader gains not only spiritual lessons but a sense of awe and wonder at the human body's complex physiology and anatomy."
--Religion Today
"Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the workings of the human body."
--Insight
"God's imaginative genius with his physical creation always has astounding parallels in the spiritual realm, and it's no different with the epitome of his creation, the human body. In their timeless Christian classic Fearfully and Wonderfully, my friend Philip and his coauthor Dr. Brand draw amazing parallels between our bodies and the Body of Christ that leave the reader startled and breathless with wonder. This remarkable book had a profound impact on my life when I first read it years ago, and its insights will astonish you for sure!"
--Joni Eareckson Tada, Joni and Friends International Disability Center
"I have greatly appreciated my friend Philip Yancey's work over the years. I enthusiastically commend this book in which Philip offers his wisdom and the wisdom of Dr. Paul Brand to a new generation of readers. I anticipate that it will be of great value to Christians and non-Christians alike."
--John M. Perkins, cofounder, Christian Community Development Association, president emeritus of the John Perkins Foundation
"I have long loved the collaboration between the marvelous theologian Philip Yancey and his mentor--orthopedic, humanitarian surgeon Paul Brand. What a blessing to reread this work after thirty years, to immerse myself in the story of Dr. Brand's work with leprosy patients in India and the Bayou, and in the resultant lessons about the miraculous workings of the human body, the beauty of human friendship and caring, the profundity of God's love. Brilliant, charming, and wonder inducing, this is a modern classic of science and faith."
--Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, Bird by Bird, and Hallelujah Anyway
"In a world divided by races and faces, healers Philip Yancey and Paul Brand knit us together by blazing a magnificent journey through the human body--inspiring discovery, cell by cell, of God's marvel of a blueprint for his unified church. A shining collaboration, their book validates well that if every cell matters, so does every life. Yet only in relation to each other do we come alive. In proving that view, Yancey and Brand achieve an uplifting and awakening balm for today's bruised and fraying church. This book is a glorious achievement, and it arrives kindly with soothing correction. But best of all, it's right on time."
--Patricia Raybon, author of My First White Friend and Undivided: A Muslim Daughter, Her Christian Mother, Their Path to Peace
"Reflections and stories by a humane tender of wounds. Paul Brand's book, like his life as a doctor, is wholly admirable."
--Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons and Confessions of a Knife
"The reader comes away in awe of the fearful and wonderful construction of the body God has given to each of us, an appreciation for the spiritual realm it illustrates, and a reverence for the God in whom both find their source."
--Christianity Today
"This book is a testimony to the peculiar mystery of God's presence--the Word made flesh, as John's Gospel names it. For people whose spiritual lives have been too disembodied, Dr. Brand's attention to living bodies invites us to return to our true selves. At the same time, Yancey has rendered enfleshened truth about our existence in words. I pray you can receive this combination of wisdom and craft as the gift that it is--a word in season, inviting each of us deeper into the life that is really life."
--Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author of Reconstructing the Gospel
"This is a stunning, wondrous book by two of my favorite people. I remember reading Phil Yancey in India, as I lived in a village of folks who had leprosy, which is also where I heard about Dr. Brand. Mother Teresa used to say that in the poor we can see Jesus 'in his most distressing disguises.' This book unpacks what that means and invites every one of us to marvel at the image of God in every person. Dr. Brand is a legendary medical doctor, and Philip is a doctor of the soul. Together they have written one of the greatest books on life . . . in a world where far too many lives are disgraced and desecrated. May it make you a champion of life, just as both of these men have been, and may we be death's greatest adversary."
--Shane Claiborne, cofounder of The Simple Way and Red Letter Christians, author of Beating Guns
