50. Fettered and Yet Free
Chapter 50
Fettered and Yet Free
Three rules of prayer helped the Family to save time and energy in prayer meetings. It was Amma, of course, who wrote them.
1. We don’t need to explain to our Father things that are known to Him.
2. We don’t need to press Him, as if we had to deal with an unwilling God.
3. We don’t need to suggest to Him what to do, for He Himself knows what to do.
Whether her children kept those rules as they prayed for her healing, we don’t know. Surely they pressed the Lord often for the healing of their dear Amma. Surely they made many suggestions.
Amy Carmichael wrote a private note on June 12, 1948, “Not relief from pain, not relief from the weariness that follows, not anything of that sort at all, is my chief need. Thou, O Lord my God, art my need—Thy courage, Thy patience, Thy fortitude. And very much I need a quickened gratitude for the countless helps given every day.”
Ten days later she was feeling pressed because of tiring interviews which came “before I had ‘obtained access.’ See 1 Kings 8:56: ‘There hath not failed one word of all His good promise.’ If we take time to let this soak in, there is rest in the midst of pressure.”
The next day, June 23, was not different from other days, to begin with—the early morning cup of tea, the usual quiet time of reading and prayer, perhaps pills for the usual pain, and then the usual people to see. Someone brought word of another who was going through deep water. She wrote a note and made up a parcel to send to her. There was no one at hand to deliver them except the nurse. She sent her off, and then made her way to the bathroom. She slipped and fell. Neela was by her side almost at once. “Don’t tell anyone,” said Amma, “I shall be all right in the morning.”
Neela promptly disobeyed, called the two doctors, Christian Rogan and Nancy Robbins, who came running. They found a broken right arm and a fractured femur. The shock to an over-eighty frame was nearly lethal, and without a blood transfusion and an injection she might quickly have passed through the Gates. She hovered very near for two days and then rallied. So, she noted wryly, those doctors had “slammed the Gates again.”
Most of the responsibility for the men’s side of the work had devolved on Godfrey Webb-Peploe since Murray’s leaving. He had also the spiritual legacy left by Walker of work in the village of Dohnavur, not to mention “all that Shepherd-work means for the Family.” Before Amma’s accident in June he had been given doctor’s orders to rest. A serious infection had set in after someone had kicked him in one of the boys’ games, and the leg had not healed. Just before Christmas of 1948 he had a thrombosis.
Amy herself, though almost totally immobile since her fall, had snapped back sufficiently to be “deep in everything, and power to think has come again.” She felt it was time for more “‘thinks,’ together with one and another of this dear family”—about their allowing her to drop out altogether of the place of leadership, and implementing what had been decided seventeen years earlier: May and Godfrey were to be the leaders. Their appointment by Amma had been perfectly clear to the Family but they had stubbornly (or was it helplessly?) refused to acknowledge her abdication. Up till now all I could say has been, as the Tamils put it, moonlight upon rock.” What she wanted without further delay was validation by the formal election of May and Godfrey in the annual Kingdom Business” meeting.
One evening seven weeks later Mary Mills came into the Room of Peace. Besides being the “Perfect Nurse” who had cared for Amy ever since her accident, she was one of the closest of her companions. Amy read in her face that something had happened.
“What is it?” she asked. “What is wrong?”
“There is nothing wrong,” said Mary. “God has trusted us with a great trust. Godfrey is in heaven.”
Godfrey, the beloved. Godfrey, her son. First it was Ponnammal, then Arulai, then Murray. One by one they had been given to her. One by one they had demonstrated the spiritual calibre she had asked God for, the character so desperately needed in a leader for her Family. And one by one they had been removed. Now Godfrey, the tower of strength she needed so much more in her old age, the one for whom she had so often thanked God. Godfrey. In heaven. We wonder what “her thoughts said” when she heard the stunning news. We wonder what “her Father said.” What dialogue took place between those two during the rest of that night? It is not recorded. We guess that she said YES. We know that she wrote to the Family next day:
“Our God trusts us to trust Him. . . . Let us not disappoint God. Let us rise to this great trust.”
She reminded them of the great promise of Romans 8:28, and of Jesus’ having wept—proof that “tears are not sin. But to go on lamenting would be sin. It would be as though we doubted the love of our most tender Father. To wonder why this has been allowed to happen would be to dishonor Him. I found myself doing this very thing. ‘Oh, why am I left—I who am useless to you all—and he, who could do so much for you, taken?’ Suddenly I knew that even to think such a thought for a moment, was sin. Thank God for the cleansing Blood. But do not let us grieve His love by wondering why. Faith never wonders why.”
Each of these deaths was a death far harder for Amy to bear than her own physical suffering. But she saw in each of them a chance to die, the opportunity to acknowledge once again the lordship of Christ in her life. He held all the rights. She had turned them over long ago to Him when she resolved to follow Him to the uttermost. The searing questions which crowded her mind she knew that she must refuse. It was one more way of saying no to herself and yes to God.
There was one question she could not possibly refuse. Who would pick up the reins? John Risk had the qualities of leadership she looked for, but was comparatively young and lacked Godfrey’s experience. The Lord was aware of all that. John must be God’s man. Who was to tell him so if not Amy? Who else was in a position to appoint him?
She wrote to him almost at once to say she expected him to take over. She was, willy-nilly, still the leader, still a prophet after the order of Judas and Silas who ‘‘exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them.”1
“As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee”2 was the verse she gave to her “David.”
Early in 1950 it was decided that it was time to invite Indians to join the leadership group which for twenty years had comprised only May Powell and the Webb-Peploes. There were two who had had all the training the DF could give—Mimosa’s oldest son Rajappan and Ponnammal’s daughter Purripu. They became associates, Rajappan working with John on the men’s side, Purripu with May on the women’s. Amy came to a settled peace that this now was the Pattern shewn.
Her phenomenal strength drained rapidly away after the fall in the bathroom. There was no more walking out under the trees or even across the room for Amma. She could not sit, let alone walk, stand, or kneel. She learned a new appreciation for each of these positions, which it had been her habit to use as helps to prayer. She was reduced to the one least conducive to prayer, the one she had never chosen—lying on her back. Throughout her life she had taken to her Lord every least thing, pleasant or unpleasant, in order to live the whole of life in Christ, discovering in each experience how He shared it with her. It was entirely natural that she should mention to Him this matter of being pinned flat. Could there possibly be a spiritual lesson there? Would it be something whereby to help somebody else? In answer, she “seemed to see Him, as He was for a few immeasurable minutes, not upright but laid flat on His Cross.
“I tell you this because some of you may find yourselves in hard ways. Always your Lord has been before you. Always He will come with a most heavenly understanding of what your heart most needs.”
Or doth another gird thee, carry thee
Whither thou wouldest not, and doth a cord
Bind hand and foot, and flying thought and word?
An enemy hath done it, even so,
(Though why that power was his thou dost not know)
O happy captive, fettered and yet free,
Believe, believe to see
Jesus Himself draw near and walk with thee.3
If it was hard to pray while supine, it was at least as hard to write. But she kept at it, lying with the paper tilted against a blotter, conscientiously finishing This One Thing and courageously turning out her letters and tiny notes as long as her hand would do her bidding.
When severe neuralgia in the right shoulder and hand made her fingers almost immovable, her New Zealand nurse tried to encourage her to exercise to keep them from stiffening completely. One day she said, “Alison, I have been trying all day to join thumb and forefinger and I cannot. Do you think that I will be able to move them again?” Alison told her that probably she would not. She lay quietly for a time, then said, “I gave that hand to the Lord for Him to use”—she remembered the exact year—“and now He has taken it again.” Further silence. Then she quoted the words of Jesus, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”4 She knew she would not write again. It was dictation after that.
Alison became ill and had to go back to New Zealand for further treatment. Before she left she was able to go and see Amma in her room. Each knew it would be the last time.
“Alison, we won’t meet again in this world. When you hear I have gone, jump for joy!”
1. Acts 15:32.
2. Joshua 1:5.
3. Toward Jerusalem, p. 86.
4. Matthew 20:15.