Chapter 3
Chapter 3
A Voice from the Fountain
It took a while for things to settle down, but slowly life around the Carmichael house fell into a new pattern. But one thing didn’t change. Amy’s parents had been strong Christians, and although Mr. Carmichael was now dead, each Sunday Mrs. Carmichael continued to take the children to the Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church. The family walked to church together dressed in their best clothes. On the walk home, Amy and her brothers Norman and Ernest liked to walk ahead of their mother and the other children. It was on one of these walks home after church that something happened that completely changed Amy’s life.
It was a cold, dreary day, and Dr. Park, pastor of the Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church, had preached a particularly long sermon. After an hour and a half sitting in the drafty church, the whole Carmichael family was eager to get home to the warmth of the fire in the drawing room fireplace. As usual, Amy, Norman, and Ernest strode out in front. They were winding their way through the streets back to College Gardens when an old beggar woman came staggering out of a side alley. Her clothes were tattered, and her feet were wrapped in strips of rags that were clogged with mud. Slung across her back in an old coal sack was a bundle of sticks. The old woman was doubled over under the weight of the heavy bundle. As the woman stumbled along, Amy and her two brothers stopped and looked at her. Despite their father’s money woes, the Carmichael children had grown up with much more money than most people. Yet they had also been taught to help others regardless of whether they were rich or poor. So with a shrug, the three of them walked up beside the old woman. Norman lifted the bundle of sticks from her back while Amy and Ernest each took hold of one of the woman’s arms and walked along beside her. The old beggar woman smiled a toothless smile and pointed toward another alley about half a mile farther down the street.
The three Carmichael children had expected to help the old woman to a nearby building. The alley she pointed out was farther away than they’d intended to help her. Nonetheless, they would see her safely there. As they made their way along the street, Amy and Ernest, dressed in their best clothes, guided the old woman in tattered rags, while Norman, also in his Sunday best, followed along behind with the pile of sticks slung across the back of his topcoat. What they hadn’t figured on was that at the pace the old woman was walking, other people on their way home from church would catch up with them. But that is exactly what began to happen. One by one, church members stared at the strange sight as they walked by. Amy felt her face getting hotter as each person from church passed them, especially when one woman hurried her children to the other side of the road to avoid the four of them altogether.
Embarrassed, Amy and her brothers kept their heads down, not even looking at each other and hoping no one important came along and saw them. There was a fountain in the center of the road, and trying to take her mind off walking along beside the beggar woman, Amy studied it closely. It was made of blocks of cut stone, and the water sprayed out from three spouts at its center. As she studied it, Amy suddenly stopped. Someone was talking to her. She clearly heard a voice say, “Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw…the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.”
Amy turned to see who was speaking. There was no one there. But she had heard a voice, plain and clear. Puzzled, she walked on with the old woman on her arm. As she did, something felt very different inside. Amy was no longer embarrassed. In fact, she walked with her head held high for all to see. The trio escorted the old woman to where she wanted to go and then ran to catch up to their mother and the other children to finish the walk home.
After lunch, Amy went to her room. She knelt down by her bed. She knew the words she’d heard at the fountain were from the Bible, and finally she located them in her small, leather-bound edition. The words were from 1 Corinthians, chapter three, verses twelve through fourteen. Amy read them again. What was their meaning to her? Amy had known for as long as she could remember that God loved her, but she began to wonder about how knowing He loved her changed the way she acted each day.
After several hours of praying and thinking, Amy finally decided she knew what the words from the verse meant to her. For one thing, she would no longer waste time on things that weren’t important in God’s eyes. When all the things she’d done in her life were finally judged by God, she wanted them to be found worthwhile. She wanted them to be seen as gold and silver, not hay and stubble. For another thing, she would never again worry about what people thought of her. If what she was doing was pleasing to God, that would be enough for her. If other people, even other Christians, didn’t want to walk with beggars, that was their business, but Amy would walk with them, and she would walk proudly.
When she finally came downstairs for dinner, Amy had a new purpose in her heart, a purpose that would lead to some very unusual changes in her life.
Amy had always been kind. As a small girl, she had once visited Belfast with her mother. During the visit, they had stopped at a tearoom for a cup of tea and some scones. As they ate, Amy noticed a grimy little beggar girl with her nose pressed up against the tearoom window. The poor little girl with no food was looking in at the rich little girl who had a plateful. The gaze in the little girl’s eyes had affected Amy deeply. When Amy got back home to Millisle, she sat down in front of her nursery fireplace and wrote a promise to the girl:
When I grow up and money have,
I know what I will do,
I’ll build a great big lovely place
For little girls like you.
Amy was also kind to animals. She couldn’t stand to see them suffer. Once, on her way to family prayers, she had noticed a mouse drowning in a bucket of water. Without a second thought, she scooped up the mouse and dropped him into her apron pocket. Unfortunately, the mouse had squeaked when her father was praying, and Amy was punished for disrupting the peace. But she had saved a mouse’s life, so the punishment was worth it.
But as kind as Amy had been in the past, there was something different about her now. She wasn’t going to be kind just because that was the right thing to do. She was going to be kind because God had asked her to be kind to those He loved. Amy’s two younger sisters were amazed at the change in her. They called her new attitude “Amy’s enthusiasms.” And Amy was enthusiastic. There was so much to do, so many people she knew God wanted her to love and be kind to.
While Amy wanted to learn more about God, she also wanted to help others learn about Him. On Sunday afternoons she would wander the streets of College Gardens and invite the local children back to the Carmichael house, where she would hold a children’s meeting. The children would sing and clap, and Amy would read them Bible stories and tell them how God loved them. While Amy was busy with the children, Mrs. Carmichael made sandwiches and lemonade for them all to enjoy when the meeting was over.
Some of the children who came on Sunday afternoons wanted to know even more about God, so Amy started her “Morning Watch Club.” The club met on Saturday mornings, and to every child who wanted to join, Amy gave a blank blue card with gold edges. On the card she had the children write out a pledge that they would spend time every day praying and reading their Bible. When they had signed the pledge card, they gave it back to Amy. Every Saturday morning after that they would meet together and discuss how well they were doing keeping their pledges. Everyone, even Amy’s two youngest brothers, looked forward to the Morning Watch Club. Amy seemed to be able to make it so much fun as they talked and learned from each other.
Amy and her friend Eleanor Montgomery also ran a night school for boys. The school met on Monday evenings, and Amy and Eleanor would help the boys who had to work in the factories during the day with their reading and writing. They would finish each night with a short “good night service,” during which Amy read from the Bible and prayed. Sometimes Eleanor’s father, Dr. Montgomery, would come along and help out. He also volunteered at the Belfast City Mission, and he soon noticed that Amy was far more interested in doing God’s work than participating in the normal social activities of eighteen-year-old young women.
Eventually, Dr. Montgomery invited Amy to go with him some Saturday evenings when he visited the slums in Belfast. Amy could think of nothing else she would rather do! And so, on Saturday nights, Amy entered a different world, the world of Belfast’s slums, where she was introduced to things she’d never seen before. She had seen beggars on the streets; she’d even helped some of them, but nobody had bothered to tell her just how desperate these people’s lives really were or what they would do to stay alive. Another thing Amy discovered in the slums was the smells. There was the smell of rotting vegetable peelings that had been thrown onto the pavement from second-story windows, the smell from makeshift toilets created in doorways or stair entrances, the smell from smoky sod fires that drunken men huddled around in the middle of the street. Amy winced at what she smelled and saw. In her wildest imagination she’d never thought human beings could live this way.
One Saturday evening as Amy and Dr. Montgomery made their way around the slums handing out bread and gospel tracts, a small blue-eyed girl wearing a ragged dress walked up to Amy and started begging for food. As Amy looked down at her, an old woman with her head wrapped in a shawl stepped forward and picked up the girl. As the woman turned to walk away with the child in her arms, Amy gasped. The shawl had fallen from the old woman’s face, and the woman was not old at all. She was probably about the same age as Amy. What kind of life has this woman led to make her back so stooped and her face so worn when she cannot be more than twenty years old? After they had given out all the bread and tracts, Amy asked Dr. Montgomery the question she’d been pondering.
Dr. Montgomery told her the women were called “shawlies.” He went on to explain that shawlies, many of them as young as ten years old, worked twelve hours a day in the linen mills that made Belfast famous. Irish linen, Irish shirts, Irish rope were among the best quality in the world, and yet they were cheap to buy. They were cheap because the girls who worked in the mills were poorly paid for their labor. Most didn’t even earn enough money to buy themselves a hat, so they pulled their shawls up over their heads when they went out in the cold, thus the nickname shawlies.
Amy couldn’t stop thinking about the shawlies. Something had to be done for them. Slowly she hatched a plan. Why not start holding meetings on Sunday mornings for the shawlies like the one she held for the neighborhood children on Sunday afternoons? She decided the hall at Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church would be a great place to hold her meetings. The church hall had plenty of room, and Amy was sure everyone in the church would love to see it used to reach out to the less fortunate citizens of Belfast.
Amy visited Dr. Park, pastor of the church, and asked him for permission for the shawlie girls to meet on Sunday mornings for Bible study and prayer in the church hall. Whether Dr. Park thought it was a good idea or whether Amy was impossible to turn down is not certain, but the pastor gave his permission for Amy to hold the shawlie meetings in the church hall.
Some members of the congregation were not happy when they discovered that the riffraff of Belfast were using the church hall. Many church folk, even friends who had known the Carmichaels for a long time, couldn’t figure out why Amy would want to associate with shawlies, let alone bring them to church. Some wondered whether Amy was aware that shawlies smelled bad and had fleas and lice. What if some of their fleas and lice crawled onto the church furniture? Soon Dr. Park was being regularly visited by church members who urged him to withdraw his permission for Amy to use the church hall for her meetings. Each time, Dr. Park refused. Frustrated by his response, some church members went straight to Amy and told her what they thought about her meetings with the shawlie girls. Amy did not care what they thought. Ever since the day she had heard the voice at the fountain she hadn’t cared what anyone thought of her. All she wanted to do was please God and share His love with others.
All her “enthusiasms” and her responsibilities around the house kept Amy very busy. In September 1886, her mother decided that Amy needed a vacation. Amy chose to go to Scotland and stay with an old school friend, Sarah McCullen. While in Scotland, the two girls traveled down to Glasgow for a Keswick meeting. Keswick was actually the name of a place in England, where twelve years before there had been some large, Christian tent meetings. Since that time, the same type of meetings had been held all over the British Isles, and they had become known as Keswick meetings.
Amy had heard a lot about Keswick meetings, and as she sat and listened to the speaker, she expected something wonderful to happen to her. But nothing did. The speaker was interesting, but Amy didn’t think anything he said was particularly powerful. Sarah, on the other hand, sat with her eyes wide and sparkling, staring at the preacher and nodding in agreement at everything he said. While Sarah was totally absorbed in the meeting, Amy sat thinking about how tight her shoes felt. Her stomach was rumbling, and she hoped the preacher would finish soon so she could go to lunch. Amy had heard so many wonderful stories of how people had experienced God during Keswick meetings that she felt disappointed. She wondered if she just wasn’t getting it, or if people had exaggerated about what they’d experienced in the meetings.
Before she could decide on an answer, the preacher finished his sermon, clapped his Bible shut, and sat down. The chairman of the meeting got up to close the service in prayer. “O Lord,” he began. “We know you are able to keep us from falling….”
The words struck Amy like a bolt of lightning. God was able to keep her from falling. Amy’s mind focused tightly on that thought. Even after the chairman had finished his prayer and everyone had begun leaving, Amy stayed deep in thought. Finally, Sarah had to pull her to her feet, but even then, Amy did not want to leave. For the first time since walking with the old beggar woman past the fountain, Amy felt as if God had spoken directly to her heart. He would keep her from falling no matter where she went, what she did, or what happened to her while doing it. God would keep her from falling. And if God would keep her from falling, there was nothing she couldn’t do. Amy could hardly wait to get back to Belfast. She had plans, big plans for the future.