17. God Keeps His Promise
17.
GOD KEEPS HIS PROMISE
Amy broke her fall with her right arm.
Embarrassed, she told Neela, “Don’t tell anyone—I shall be all right in the morning.”1
But Neela immediately sent for the doctors. “All right in the morning” turned out to be a broken arm, a fractured thighbone, and an injury of undetermined severity to her hip. Amy hardly had the chance to feel sorry for herself. Godfrey Webb-Peploe was in worse shape than she was. His activity was now sharply curtailed because of failing health. What had happened to Amy’s successors? Her best and brightest? Were they all going to fall before she did? Ponnammal, Arulai, Murray. Now Godfrey?
December brought numbing news. Godfrey had a clot in his right leg. He had to have complete rest. The clot must not move. In the meantime, Amy could scarcely move herself, as she confessed in a letter:
Year by year since 1935, when it seemed clear that recovery from the repercussions of the “accident” in 1931 was unlikely, I have asked that plans for the future, made clear to us in 1931, might be implemented.…Just now we are facing the unkindest thing, and the most dangerous spiritually, that the devil could contrive for us, and much prayer and thought must be spent upon it.…2
On February 19, 1949, Mary Mills came to Amy’s side and said simply, “Godfrey is in heaven.”3
No!
Amy seemed to weaken within seconds. What was going to happen to their wonderful enterprise for Christ? Where was the leadership? She was now eighty-one and very weak. On top of everything else, the new Indian government was making new rules and regulations all the time. The Fellowship now had to send out students to other schools just so they could get certification to teach and train the children at Dohnavur. To her closest confidants, Amy now spoke of the “crashing disappointments” of recent years. Only John Risk, an ex-naval officer, seemed to be developing into a leader.
But something wonderful happened.
Ponnammal’s daughter, Purripu, began to emerge as a real leader. And so did Mimosa’s son, Rajappan. Why had Amy doubted God? Did she think she personally had done all this? Praise God for His grace. All her old axioms came flooding back: “If the day ends in what seems failure, don’t fret. Tell Him you’re sorry. Even so, don’t be discouraged. All discouragement is of the devil.” “We don’t need to press Him, as if we had to deal with an unwilling God.” “We don’t need to suggest to Him what to do, for He Himself knows what to do.” It seemed that in her fatigue Amy had forgotten all her own advice. But it all would end for the good. God was the Master.
When one of her nurses came in to say good-bye before she left on furlough, Amy said, “We won’t meet again in this world. When you hear I have gone, jump for joy!”4
By the time Amy turned eighty-three, she was truly immobile. She thought of little but her glorious Homecoming. Oh, praise God for the joy of the moment! Think who she would see: her mother, her father, the D.O.M., Thomas Walker, Ponnammal, Kohila, Mimosa, Arulai, Godfrey. The moment surpassed all her capacity to even imagine such joy. Once in a while she was brought back to the present. Had she heard someone speak of a headstone? She had told them emphatically that under no circumstances was she to have a headstone in God’s Garden.
BY THE TIME AMY TURNED EIGHTY-THREE, SHE SHE THOUGHT OF LITTLE BUT HER GLORIOUS HOMECOMING.
“And no coffin, just a wooden slab,” she reminded her surprised nurse.
Amy heard whispers wishing she would tell them that she heard celestial music and saw Bunyan’s marvelous Shining Ones and so forth. Hadn’t she told the Fellowship, poor souls, that—except for flowers and songs of joy—she wished to go quietly? Had they forgotten that the Lord had told her in a dream, “I shall come to Thee in sleep—no rending good-byes—no distress to anyone”?
On January 18, 1951, He quietly kept His promise.