47. The Razor Edge
Chapter 47
The Razor Edge
The supreme gift of the soldier is the power to simplify amid confusion, to make a simple syllogism, which once it is made seems . . . unquestionable, but which before it is made is in the power only of genius.”
This, from John Buchan’s Cromwell, is quoted in one of Amy’s notes to the Fellowship.
Instead of ‘genius’ read ‘faith,’” she added, ‘‘and you will understand why anything like careless sureness was always far from the one on whom the final responsibility of decisions lay, and who would be, if the decision proved to be caused by a mistaken reading of the will of God, blameworthy.”
She tells how, when a major purchase of land was to be made, she used to sign the checks kneeling by her desk, “so deeply did I fear.” It was the razor edge between faith and presumption, so exceedingly fine that she had to walk. I know we never moved forward without sureness, and yet there was always this prayer at the root of action. I won’t attempt to explain the apparent contradiction except by this true saying, ‘From the circumference even opposite lines run to the centre.’”
Sureness but not careless sureness. Fear and faith. Middle-of-the night misgivings and dawn’s renewed determination to take God at His word. The power to simplify amid confusion. Amy had all of the above. She was still a woman, a fallible creature like the psalmist: “When I said, ‘my foot slippeth’ like Paul: “the good that I would I do not”; like John: “yet if any man sin. . . .” Nothing exempted the Dohnavur crowd from being “miserable offenders,” like the rest of the world. The whole lot was daily in need of that amazing grace which had brought them safe thus far, and would finally lead them home.
“All the conflicts were between what Amma thought God wanted and what others thought God wanted” was the diagnosis of one of the Family. “We all thought we had the mind of Christ.”
Ronald Proctor, a practical man who confessed that he often saw mud where Amma saw stars, informed her that the old Ford needed to be replaced. It was a simple matter of what was going on in its insides. To Amy it was a spiritual matter, one for prayer and pondering. She told him she really did not “feel” it right to buy a new car. On the next trip the brakes gave out and the old Ford rolled straight for the water. “We were very nearly, feelings and all, at the bottom of the tank,” Ronald reported. That was guidance. The car was replaced.
Then there was the shattering disagreement with one of Amy’s most beloved, Murray Webb-Peploe, a man of loyalty and truth. Irresistible force met an immovable object. Murray’s wife, Oda, had taken the twins to England for schooling. This meant a much longer separation for husband and wife than when the boys were at school in the hills. The time came when Oda could not go on without Murray. His loyalty to Amma and the work he had no doubt he had been called to was in conflict with his loyalty and love for his wife. There was a tug of war. His mother took Oda’s side. “Years ago you sought my counsel,” she wrote to Murray, . . . but those days passed, and another woman (not Oda) took that place, though you may not have realized it.”1
What was the man to do?
He understood and fully subscribed to the principles of guidance which Amy had spelled out for the Family:
The devil sometimes speaks and tries to deceive us into thinking it is the voice of God. He tries to get us, who long to walk in the light, to follow instead a will-o-the-wisp into the marsh. In the matter of guidance there are three important points:
1. The Word of the Lord in the Bible.
2. The Word of the Spirit in our heart.
3. The circumstances of our lives, which have been arranged by God.
All three must point one way. It is never enough for any two of them to be taken as showing God’s will. If the voice is God’s all three will agree.
The thought of Murray’s being drawn away “into the marsh,” as she could not help thinking, was a major calamity for Amy. What could have been clearer than the guidance both she and he had had about his coming to Dohnavur? What could be more important than his place as director of the hospital? Why could Oda not have been content either to educate the boys in India or to send them, as most missionaries had always done, to boarding school? Furthermore, a commitment to the DF, in Amy’s view, was a commitment for life.
This matter of how the Word of the Lord was received for guidance is illuminated in a letter Amy had written just after the Webb-Peploes had arrived in Dohnavur. They had had the temerity to take issue with Amma over a journey she proposed to make.
“The word came to me to go to Madura. . . . Nobody saw it possible, but it was clear to me and I knew it would soon be clear to them and so it was. Next morning dear Murray and Godfrey came to me, having got light, then the others most beautifully got light.”
One of them had read that morning of the manger in Bethlehem, which, by what would appear some rather fancy mental footwork, gave meaning to the thought of the heat and the noise of Madura—if Jesus could come to a manger, she could go to Madura. That settled it for him. Others got words of equal clearness and by noon all who understand this kind of leading were ready to pray through.” So to Madura she went, confirmed in her guidance by the unity of her comrades.
The urging of Murray’s wife, children, and mother were not by any means sufficient reason in Amma’s mind for him to leave. Then he received ‘a jolly stiff letter” from none other than the home director of the China Inland Mission, who was also the chairman of the Keswick convention, W. H. Aldis, telling him to come to Oda. Under other circumstances such a man s counsel would have carried much weight with Amma. Not this time. She could not see this as anything but a grave mistake.
Early in 1947 Murray went. It was good-bye forever to Dohnavur.
“Pray that I may be directed in the writing of Dust of Gold” [about Murray’s departure] Amy asked. “Unless it is clearly shown that it is NOT our DF way (though we stand by Murray in it for he has no choice) it will stumble many.”
She could not bear disunity. Love, the Gold Cord which bound the Dohnavur Fellowship together, must bring about oneness of mind as well as heart. If God had shown her one thing, would He show the rest another thing? There is no instance on record of Amy’s accepting another’s guidance after she believed she had been given clear guidance in a matter.
Loyalty meant never questioning motives, always looking for an excuse for others’ actions when they seemed out of line, never speaking about a person but always to him. To raise an objection to the Pattern was to skate perilously close to disloyalty.
One night, in great distress because there had been a disagreement between two people, Amy wrote a many-paged letter “To my children who are comrades in the war. There was truth on both sides. She reminded them of the need to go straight to the other. “O my children, if only you would make up your minds never to doubt the love of another sister or brother in Christ, but always to think the best and never admit an unkind thought in your heart, how happy, how heavenly, life would be . . . If this were the last time I could speak to you I should say just these words, Beloved, let us love, O let us love. We perish if we do not love. Let us love.”
1. Katherine Makower, Follow My Leader, p. 158.