Loving God enough to break ancient rules (part 3 of 6)
A faithful steward
In these pages we look back with love and thankfulness. In mission circles and in our memory she will remain one of God’s faithful servants, whose greatest desire it was to summon young and old to Christ Jesus. She lived out a life of love. This is the story of Amy Carmichael, the woman with the brown eyes, whose radiant life in Dohnavur is best portrayed with the Indian word for such a woman: darshan, the blessing or benediction imparted by the mere sight or physical presence of a great soul. Her history is a supreme assertion of the supernatural in ordinary life. She was a traveller who, starting on her journey with a clearly marked and time-worn route before her, found herself checked by the touch that is not human and turned to a way, very difficult and hard to find, that led to a destination that she had not figured out herself.2448 However, the time and the things described here will never be only the years and the things that are gone, but will give us the encouragement and the perspective that the worldwide work done today by God’s faithful servants will not be in vain, for ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’.2449
The two paradigms of mission work that Amy emphasises are the total dependence on the Lord and the systematic approach as can be seen in the Dohnavur premises. Amy in all her work, to keep on the right track to the end of her life, kept her gaze fixed on God. Her joy was in God’s company and her heart pure in its devotion to the will of God. If ever there was one who fed on the Word of God, it was she, and that Word never failed her. She was committed with a handful of seed, and the fruit of what she
2445. Cf. Though the Mountains Shake, 112, 26, 139 and 19.
2446. Cf. John 21:8 ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go’. 2447. Chambers, Still Higher For His Highest, 121.
2448. Cf. Sanders, Sainte Chantal, 1.
2449. Hebrews 13:8 (RSV).
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sowed was seen in the lives of hundreds of Indian children who worshipped the Lord and were Christ obsessed. It was done in such a way as to be put as a seed in the earth herself, the Lord’s way with her to see much fruit. Poor indeed in this world’s goods; the money that came to her was given by the Lord and all was used for the children. But she was so rich in the treasure that she laid up in Heaven. There she had investments of unsurpassed value, and she looked eagerly for the interest that would accrue from that deposit. It is paying off up to this very moment. Her God was and is so faithful!
What is the secret of her consecrated life and far-reaching influence? She had a God-controlled life and followed her Master as a disciple who never flagged for herself, and with an intensity of purpose she made many in India and abroad see both the reality and the power of real Christian religion. And the legacy? So many lives were touched and changed irrevocably.2450 Amy has left behind a memory, which shall not die, and a work for God which cannot be destroyed. In her work in Dohnavur, as well as in her books she provides us with some cornerstones for a modern accountable mission.
Her fight against the battalions of darkness is still going on. A new generation has to be informed of what is really happening behind the scenes. The battle against evil and the extent of the grief, suffering and need of so many women and girls worldwide is still going on. In Fuller’s The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood2451 is written ‘The public so soon forgets, and needs to be reminded so often […] to remember the wrongs of Indian womanhood’, and in the margin Amy wrote in big letters ‘Yes’.
By breaking an evil tradition, in attacking the devil’s territory and to accomplish her vision, Amy remained true to God and knew that she was not the designer of her destiny. She had heard the call of God, obeyed and realised what he wanted her for. Started in a pioneer time and area, it nowadays needs to re-tool the existing structure to prepare and to strengthen the Fellowship for the ‘battle’ in present times. She nicely combined both aspects of the Gospel, the verbal proclamation and a Gospel ministry of justice. The test of her life was not what she could show at the end of her life, but faithfulness as a steward of the mysteries of God in Dohnavur life as it was at that time. ‘This one thing’, to glorify God, was for her the glory of God manifested in the redeemed lives of the Dohnavur children. In pure devotion to God she did her work in the actual human south India conditions, learning to live the life hidden with Christ. She never talked of success, never did she put herself in the forefront; she evaded the cameras – she even erased her image in a photo of a missionary group – and never allowed people who visited Dohnavur to focus on her, all glory belonged to the crucified and the risen Lord!
Her life of faith was not lived in a monastic way, and did not consist of acts of great self-denial and heroic virtues, but of all the daily conscious acts of her life. She was not called to success, but to faithfulness. Still today many who have known her love her, because their love was born of deep respect for Amy’s life of absolute transparent sincerity, of selfless devotion and unreserved consecration. Today there is something very moving in experiencing the love many have for Amma in Dohnavur, a love still firm as a rock.
Through the work of Amy and some other concerned people, temple prostitution was banned towards the end of Amy’s life. Yet today the practice is going on, for it was never really enforced. The horrific sexual perversion of children, both girls and boys, is still a blight upon the great land of India. In
2450. While writing this section the present author heard of the legacy of one of his colleagues, Sr. Rie Staal, missionary to the Turkana people in Kenya in the 1970s and 1980s. She died in Kenya and was buried among the Turkana people in Lokichar (Kenya). A young theology student from Turkana told us in 2015 that in Turkana people talk with great love about Sr. Staal who out of love for Christ and the people gave a future to the blind and the crippled people, so they could earn a living for themselves.
2451. Fuller, The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood, 13. the 21st century violence and oppression against women manifest themselves in molesting, stripping, rape, eve-teasing, kidnapping, abduction, domestic violence, wife battering, dowry harassment, dowry deaths, cruelty to women, driving them to suicide and in several other forms.2452 In Amy’s time:
[A] woman was considered a completely inferior species, inferior to the male, having no significance, no personality. Socially, she was kept in a status of utter subjugation, denied any right, suppressed and oppressed; she was further branded as lacking the ethical fibre.2453 Amy’s courageous efforts to rescue children from sex trafficking was a shining example in a spiritual dark land with the dark deeds which ages ago had invaded the Hindu religion or in Amy’s words ‘the smoking hell of battle’.2454 God’s vision for women unlocked that potency, unleashing, at that time, an unparalleled message of hope for tiny children and opening for them opportunities to grow into mature, healthy, God-fearing girls and boys. It gave them a real future as they were prevented from living and dying in places where human suffering, female oppression and sexual exploitation – in Amy’s own words, ‘such unutterable wrong […] should be swept out of the land without a day’s delay’ – sink to unimagined lows. As Amma to her children, combining a heart being moved to deeper feelings, she helped many to understand themselves today in a world that has changed so much and so radically and where people see a great number of the old values and certainties fall away, and to care about contemporary mission issues.
The little girl in Millisle who prayed for brown eyes had seen throughout her life that God hears prayer. The children whom God had saved and brought to Amy are but a drop in the sea. Despite the strong opposition she faced, despite the proud strong huge temple walls, she was confident that it was the Lord’s right to reign in the world, also in the utmost south of India. In the face of it all she was in her Father’s will, and ‘it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones perish’. Although new laws have been implemented that forbid the trafficking of children, Amy already knew that more was needed:
But let it be remembered that good though (we trust) the now nearly approaching change will be, it will not end the evil, it will not end the need for the work we are doing. No blessed full stop to this work is in view yet, nor can it be till India itself in its inward parts is renewed and purified.2455 Travel on several highways and secondary roads brings the visitor in one and a half hours from Tuticorin to Dohnavur. Along the road, in the villages and towns, the temples proudly tower above the houses as bastions of idol worship. Still the words Salvation and Praise are above the entrance of one of Dohnavur’s moon gates. The outside world has never been without confusion and grotesque sins. Reading through Isaiah 60:18 you read, ‘Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders’. But the selective abortion of females – ‘a genocide of epic proportions’2456 – and child trafficking is still going on secretly in south India and many boys and girls fall into the hands of adults who exploit them. Sex trafficking of little girls into a life of prostitution is a booming business and many innocent young women are lured into the brothels for the pleasure of many Western ‘holiday’-goers. The church has to raise her voice over this commercialised practice of shame.2457
2452. Cf. G. Mukerjee, Dowry Death in India (Delhi: Indian Publishers and Distributors, 1999).
2453. S. Ruhela, Understanding the Indian Women Today: Problems and Challenges (Delhi: Indian Publishers and Distributors, 1999), 47–48 (in Matthews, ‘The Theological Contributions of Amy Carmichael’, 18).
2454. Things As They Are, 3.
2455. The Continuation of a Story, 7.
2456. In James, Half The Church, 29.
2457. See James’s plea in Half The Church (introduction and Chapter 1, 29–43).
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Today many young people work as slaves in industries making clothes for the Western markets. Still the ‘garments of praise’ are not worn by everyone. Here Amy worked for more than 50 years, a woman used by God for a special task and the Lord bestowed on her special gifts and graces to lay the foundation of the Dohnavur rescue work and far beyond.
Nowadays many houses of the Fellowship in Dohnavur are empty. Maintenance of the buildings is in arrears. It is now more than 10 years since a baby was brought to Dohnavur. Government regulations have to be adhered to and many children without any parents are now put under government care. The missionaries have all gone and present-day Indian leadership goes on with the same love with which they were received and educated in the Fellowship. Many elderly women, of whom the majority still remember something of Amy, constitute the greater part of all the inhabitants of the compound. But this number is decreasing every year. The hospital is still running, although on a very basic level; the equipment and the buildings show what happened here 50 years ago but can no longer meet the required medical standard of the 21st century, and so they have had their best years. No longer do the medical staff pray in the House of Healing at 7 a.m. every day. People talk openly about their anxiety of what will happen in the future. Is the younger generation willing to work here without any payment? But God is faithful, for in the Praise and Prayer Notes of the Fellowship we read: ‘Give thanks for the Lord’s guidance, protection, faithfulness and love in leading the work of the hospital for the past 80 years [as at 15 November 2016]’.2458
When CIM missionaries were driven out of China by political force, we witnessed that the mission drive had not weakened but rose like a phoenix in the second part of the 20th century, spreading the Gospel in many Asian countries. The name change of the CIM to OMF, and the settling of the headquarters in Singapore, did not change Hudson Taylor’s vision. This switch and the total and economic situation could have challenged many countries after World War II when they got their independence – India in 1947 – but on the contrary, missionaries gained footholds in many of these East Asian countries, spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Dohnavur Fellowship never made the transition to the new era after Amy’s death, like the CIM did after 1951. For too long, until the 1980s, missionaries from overseas had the final say. Despite the unselfish, serving, fully dedicated staff of the Dohnavur Fellowship keeping things going as from before 1951, outside reality crept in, and now they are daily faced with the outside world. Even the grown-up girls who need to be prepared for their future experience the shock of being confronted with the reality of the present-day Indian society, a society connected with the whole world. For future leadership Amy had always had in mind that Indian woman should be installed as leaders and she herself trained an Indian woman; however, she died early. ‘Some of the women’, and Nesaruthina was the first:
[G]raduated from colleges, and came back with renewed ideas about the management of the institution and also had the skills to work these ideas out, but were put aside by the men, because men here do not like ideas coming from outside. And among the women there are sometimes dissatisfactions about who will have the leadership and there are situations to reconcile quarrelling and gossiping persons.
Nowadays all the Dohnavur girls get their training at various colleges, but in the rather conservative south of India the dominant influence of men is still felt in the ‘women’ institution that the Dohnavur Fellowship is:
India is not a Western country. People here are afraid of each other. [But] in the spirit of the Scripture and as Amma would say, ‘love is the answer’, we don’t want to quarrel about this issue and we have reconciled here with the idea.
2458. In Praise and Prayer Notes of the Dohnavur Fellowship, December 2016.
I value Carolyn C. James’s plea for (women) leaders as they go deeper in their relationship with God to contribute their gifts to the church and to use their expertise in the saving programmes for children in danger.2459
In Amy’s time the Lord showed her his pattern and revealed his will. In her mission work she made sure that biblical reflection infused all that she said and did. She never went empty and nowadays the life of God and his dealings with Dohnavur is given to the present leaders that they may draw the living water from the same fountain and know the way to go on. The Dohnavur Fellowship is not put in God’s showroom. ‘God never has museums’,2460 but is willing to lead and guide those who have to make the decisions. In due time, people who have known Amy personally will never say the lovely words about Amy again; they are and will be in the land of welcome with their Saviour whom they loved. When we all meet again, it will be to sing with them the glad and new song of praise: ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing’.2461 The Dohnavur Fellowship is still going on and has not lost its primary vision. Today many are involved in rescue work in Asia in the rescue work of children in danger, but the women in Dohnavur will be encouraged by Carolyn James’s words:
Although everyone is concerned about the need to reach more men, maybe these high percentages of women should make us wonder what God is doing, for he often forges significant inroads for the gospel by beginning with women.2462 To bring him glory is the best thing anyone in heaven or earth can do. Since the Dohnavur Fellowship started it has gone through sorrowful ways; many a storm came. But still, above and within and around, like a fountain, there has been something bright, even that ‘sweet original joy’ which nothing and nobody can darken or quench.
And yet! The year 1867 showed us the birth of the two children of which we read in the introduction: the Irish girl outlived the Scottish boy by nearly 50 years. Both started a remarkable work, a work continuing in our 21st century. When Peter Cameron Scott set out for Africa in 1895, he had a very clear goal in view – a chain of mission stations between Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast, to Lake Chad; a way to the heart of Africa. He saw this as a vital barrier to halt the southward spread of Islam and a base from which to reach out to the unreached peoples of east and central Africa. Now after more than 120 years of mission, the work of AIM continues to grow, with ministry taking place in over 20 countries and millions of believers worshipping the Lord. ‘But we are still not there yet’. The ultimate goal is to see: ‘Christ-centred churches among all African peoples’.2463 Triumphant love gives Katie Davis in Uganda the strength and the courage to save so many lives of children:
A baby was born who transformed the world then, and still does today. […] I realize I have chosen an unusual path in my life and come to the conclusion that it is something extraordinary. That I am courageous. That I am strong. That I am special! But I am just a plain girl from Tennessee. Broken in many ways, sinful, and inadequate.
2459. See James, Half The Church, 159. ‘For what I can see, women and girls are a rich and largely untapped goldmine – a powerhouse of blessing and gifts for the church, of strength and wisdom for our brothers, and of enormous good for the world’ (pp. 159–160).
2460. In Chambers, The Complete Works, 940.
2461. Revelation 5:12.
2462. In Half The Church, 27.
2463. In The African Connection 2 (AIM, 2013), 3.
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Common and simple with nothing special about me. Nothing special except I choose to say ‘yes’ to the people He places in front of me. You can too. I am just an ordinary person. An ordinary person serving an extraordinary God.2464 And for us? As a pregnant mother is responsible for the welfare and health of the child she carries, so is every church is responsible for its generation within its ‘womb’. To use Amy’s vocabulary, we are at war with the most sophisticated enemy the Church has ever faced. The price Satan claims are our own precious young men and women. It is for us to adopt a wartime mentality and to discern the subtle attacks that are taking place every day in our homes and schools.
In south India the Dohnavur Fellowship continues since it started in the early 20th century. Still the thoughts of 100 years ago linger through all the publications. The aim of the Fellowship is still the same and put in the same words Amy wrote long ago when she was asked this question:
What is your chief desire for yourselves and for others?
For ourselves it is that our Lord should be ‘the inward power which colours all our thought, and gives us direction and quality to our affections’. For others it is that they should know and love Him too. What is your message to the people of India?
We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Christ’s sake.2465 Amy’s life work in saving thousands of children in physical and moral danger is going on in Dohnavur, as the need for a home, care and shelter for male and female babies still exists, and the educating of young girls and boys from all over India at the Santhosha Vidhyalaya Secondary School. After 1947 social welfare centres gave protection to many children in need; however, at the beginning of the new millennium the Dohnavur Fellowship stated that many children born out of inter-caste marriages were often rejected, female babies considered a burden and a curse due to the burden of the dowry system, and due to poverty, quarrels and divorces, in most cases the best way to get rid of the child is thought to be by killing it. In cases of a second marriage, a step-father or step-mother nearly always refuses to accept the child or children and small girls are even poisoned or thrown down the well. ‘Therefore, the Dohnavur Fellowship still exists, and prayerfully tries to seek-out and save children from such dangers.’2466
The work began with one woman, and without the work Amy started these children would never have known what it meant to be loved unconditionally. Primary and secondary education is now offered for the children of Indian missionaries from all over India, so they can grow up into faithful women and men. After having finished their education, they go back to their respective areas and the women will serve the Lord in Christian motherhood, in all kinds of work in society or in evangelistic work. The Dohnavur Fellowship today is still prepared to receive, and to be a home for, children who have no family.
In this third millennium India will be evangelised by independent Indian missionary effort, backed by prayers from Christians all over the world, prayers born of fellowship with Christ and by that unseen cloud (Heb 12:1). In the hour, the Christian message being unpopular, it is the women who fearlessly declare themselves disciples of Christ. They are now important in sharing the burden of many un-evangelised in India as well as in the majority of the East Asian countries. God honoured these and thousands of other early missionaries as they faithfully preached the Gospel and previously
2464. See Davis, Kisses from Katie, 118.
2465. See The Starry Cluster, 11.
2466. See Nesaruthina Carunia, ‘Jewels For His Coronet’, in Dust of Gold, no. 246, August 2001, 13. unreached people were reached for Christ. Is not this how we should regard her, as a servant of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God? The reward she sought was the glory of her Master, selfremembrance in her was dead. Was not she the embodiment of 1 Corinthians 4:2 – ‘Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy’ (RSV)? In describing the Dohnavur Fellowship’s principles Amy wrote that all who joined them ‘followed from the first a path to a clear goal’.2467 This 21st century asks for faithful men and women to see to that the ultimate goal is reached. Men and women with the one desire, one vision to gather the lost sheep, and who in comprehensive ministry to body, mind and spirit, in sacrificial dedication, are obeying Christ’s commission, ‘Go ye’.
And yet, is the work worth doing? And the future? Let Amy answer these questions. When on a Palm Sunday some of the elder girls and boys were to confess Christ in baptism, she wrote:
They were standing in a semicircle on the sand by the water side, and round them a ring of converts, now workers, each with a little child in her arms; for the babies were with us that day so that their nurses could come. One by one the children walked into the water, and we on the shore were watching, when from the far West, over the mountains, a flood of glorious light streamed out upon us all, till the children in the water seemed bathed in liquid gold. It was so sudden and so glorious that instinctively we looked up, almost expecting to see something seen but once – long, long ago; and the glory of it flashed through us, laying bare for us one brief moment all the inwardness of joy deep under reach of speech. Do not such moments come to all who have known something of a walk with Christ at midnight over moonless seas? Moments when the joy is so exquisite that the heart knows well it is not of earth? It is just a note dropped from the song of the Lord our God and our Redeemer, just an overflow of that transcendent joy. But it is enough for us, enough till the mortal has put on immortality. More would be too much.2468 It was a long way from Belfast’s fountain experience until the end in 1951. Everything that was of herself had gone by the board when the tests came, even when the supreme test came. It was applied by Paul:2469
Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.
Amy, in full dependence and obedience, built on the only and one foundation: on Christ – the solid Rock – and his Cross.2470 We are never told to follow in all the footsteps of God’s servants, but only in so far as they have obeyed God, as Paul says,2471 ‘For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me’.
She, truly great as she was little in herself, made no account of any height of honour ever. Truly great is who is great in love. Humility and holiness always go together. Her walk as God’s missionary, with a strong family likeness to Christ Jesus, was gloriously difficult, but also gloriously certain. With body, soul and spirit comprehended in the manifestation of the marvellous power and grace of God she was brought into fascinating captivity in the Lord Jesus Christ. She walked worthily,
2467. Roots, 1.
2468. The Beginning of a Story, 22–23.
2469. In 1 Corinthians 3:12–13.
2470. Cf. O. Chambers, ‘Studies in the Sermon on the Mount’, in The Complete Works: ‘Discipleship is based not on devotion to abstract ideals, but on devotion to a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, consequently the whole of the Christian life is stamped by originality’ (p. 1441).
2471. In 1 Corinthians 4:15–16.
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with no show to keep up, no veneer, but with the words of the other messenger of Christ, John the Baptist, looking upon Jesus as he walked, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’.2472
This book is written nearing the 150th birthday anniversary of Amy Carmichael. Never, in all those years, has the Lord failed to answer Amy and the Dohnavur family, and to this day the Dohnavur family and their friends worldwide speak of the faithfulness of God. And the future? Ralph Manning has this question: ‘How does the Dohnavur Fellowship continue to serve the Lord Jesus in His great commission in the 21st century?’ He sees challenges and great opportunities for the Gospel, too. The rescue work and care of vulnerable and abused young people will continue. New hopes for leading young girls and women to Christ’s tender life-changing care are nowadays more complex and difficult to address, but the Fellowship prays to seek and find appropriate ways to meet these challenges.
The hospital still gives opportunities for Christian outreach and will focus more on the great problem of alcohol abuse and addiction. The Santhosha Vidhyalaya boarding school continues to release many missionaries for active service in India, knowing that their children are safely educated and cared for in Dohnavur. Continuing care will be given to the elderly women, the former Accals and other ‘unsung heroes’ (those who taught, cooked, nursed, cleaned, etc.). To be in Dohnavur today is a privilege, as we can see what the Lord is doing there first-hand.2473
It is beyond the scope of this book to write about the present-day church in India. Hundreds of pastors and missionaries, Indians as well those as from abroad, serve the Church in India. There is a vibrant Church in many parts of India today, members of which look back with gratitude to Amy, at least in the south. And here we remember with thanksgiving the other godly Indian women and men who, in Amy’s days and in later years, laid the foundation of churches spread over the whole of India.
Modern India of 2017 is rapidly embracing the ‘nuclear family’ lifestyle, already prevalent in the Western world. Can the Fellowship structure as it was created by Amy in the beginning of the 20th century continue? Jacky Woolcock told the present author:
The Dohnavur children are still very much a family and this is one of the wonderful things about it. They have a name as Dohnavur or Amy’s children and they have each other and they can come home when there are problems. If a girl gets into difficulties, say in Chennai, the other girls there will be among the friends to rally round. It is such a deprivation to be without own family.
Since 1951 we have, in missionary circles, missed the deep theological reflections Amy gave us, spread all over her publications. We miss them dearly because in the last 50 years mission agencies have mostly dealt with practical issues. The Dohnavur Fellowship continues making day-to-day decisions depending on the situation. However, Amy’s ideas and reflections need to be translated into and developed in our time, so that the Fellowship, so deeply rooted in the Scriptures, will be in rapport with our time. And still the question is: What about the future? We give the pencil to Amy:
‘The Future’ – that word used to appear in letters which in weak hours fastened on the mind like claws. But always there was inward solace: ‘Shall I not be in the future?’ […] Days may come when it will feel like a legacy of difficulties. The more fully those others are trusted and the dearer they are, the keener the thrust of the question, What if they be over-burdened? They will never bend, what if they break? There are many familiar words that have power to parry that thrust; they will occur at once. But some not so familiar have lately been strong succour, and as what helps one soul often helps another, I will write them here: ‘Who has wrought and
2472. John 1:36.
2473. See R. Manning, ‘Dohnavur’s continuing mission in changing times’ in Dust of Gold, no. 298, 7–9. done it, calling the generations to the beginning? I the Lord, the first and with the last (or as the marginal reading is, with those who come after); I am He’. Almost the eye would read, ‘I the Lord, the first and the last’. But no, it is the eternal ‘with’ of His blessed Presence; I the Lord, the first and with the last. […] Small questions fall on us in a light refreshing shower. We can answer them easily, and, in answering, our hearts are refreshed in faith. Who hath wrought and done it, Thou and no other.
Did I ever fail thee when thou wast carrying on that work? Never, Lord, never.
And shall I fail those who come after?
That cannot be, O Lord; Thou art The Same. Their travail shall not seem little to Thee. If this be so, be at rest, My child; cast not away thy confidence which hath great recompense of reward. Let not thy heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
Scholars find something arresting about the grammatical form in which these words are cast; it gives them ‘an impressive, affectionate and so to speak caressing tone’. Need the heart that has known, not once, but a thousand times that ‘caress’ of the Eternal Comforter, ever be anxious about those who come after?2474 And nearly at the end of her life Amy wrote:
What called you together? Love, Divine Love.
What holds you together? That same Love.
What will hold you in the future? Again and only, that Love.
What is most attacked in your Fellowship life?
Love, and the kind of prayer that means traffic with Heaven hindered access to the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ. […]
That is its true desire. But its word is, Not as though we had already attained either were already perfect. No, we are far from being that, but trusting to the pardoning love of our Lord and His lovely grace, we follow after – we are pressing on. And we ask Him of whom it is written: ‘He had in His right hand seven stars’, in His mercy to continue to hold and direct The Starry Cluster do that being joined together in the same mind we may all ‘move together like a flock of wild birds’.2475 Dreaming of the past we take courage for the future. Looking back at the work as it took shape, Amy who leaned on God and had learned lessons of reliance upon the invisible alone:
We see it like the mountainside that is familiar to many of us now, for it stands above our Forest House. There is apparent change in that mountain. The colours of the grass and the trees vary with every swift lightening and shadowing of sky and air. Mists in the clefts and hollows, torrents tearing down the face of the rocks, the sweep of the seasons – change is in each of these. But there are scars in the rock, and there is something changeless about a scar rock. The ways of our work may change, the colours will call for new decisions; but the elemental things, the convictions, which are part of its creation, these will remain. Stuff up the scars with brushwood, soften their firm lines, try to make them just a little more decorative, and the mountain will not be the mountain that you know. ‘The work’ will never go deeper than we have gone ourselves. ‘I bear in my body the marks – I
2474. Cf. the chapter in Amy’s book Windows that she calls ‘With Those who Come After’ (pp. 206–209). 2475. In The Starry Cluster, 21. The last sentence is a quotation Amy uses from James Jeans, The Stars in Their Courses. Of the importance of Love speaks Saint Teresa of Jesus in her The Interior Castle, these words were underlined by Amy: ‘Know my daughters that true perfection consists in the love of God and of our neighbour. […] This love of one another is so important, that I near wished it to be forgotten. If you go about remarking in other little nothings, which often are not even imperfections, but perhaps, in your ignorance, you take them amiss, you will lose your own peace of mind, and trouble that of others’ (p. 15).
Chapter 22
bear branded on my body the scars of Jesus as my Master’. Can he have followed far, who has nor wound nor scar?2476 And the future of the Fellowship in this 21st century? Amy saw the future of the Fellowship in the light of Christ’s coming:
Will not the One to Whom we always look as alone responsible, undertake the future when it comes – if it comes – for is He not the God of the future as much as of the present? I say if it comes, for at least some of us are hastening unto the Coming of the Lord in glad anticipation. But if that Coming be delayed and the difficult future has to be lived through, even so, need we, should we fear?
The family members of the Dohnavur Fellowship trust in their unchanging and unchangeable God.
Who started the work? Who chose the place. […] Surely, then, the choice of the place may be left in peace. […] He Who has been with us to-day, planting flowers by our road-side, will be with us tomorrow.2477 What is now our present was once future to us. […] Will not the One to Whom we always look as alone responsible, undertake the future when it comes – if it comes – for is not the God of the future as much as of the present? […] The future was present to the One who chose Dohnavur for us, when He chose it.2478 Amy ran the race set before her. She lived for the things that are eternal; she lived her life which had for its centre Christ. Today we know her in the unseen cloud of witnesses that surrounds us. Not to miss God’s opportunities we ‘run with endurance’, ‘surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses’ – of whom Amy is one – we ‘look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith’.2479 What remains for us is to have our eyes fixed on the Lord, to continue and run the same race, looking forward to Jesus. When the situation seems perplexing, the onward path obscured by clouds, lack of understanding, threats, and accusations of making converts, God was and is faithful! We have a God who lives in eternity, and knows no limits. God is on the move today, and how we will respond? Amy would say with the words of Isaiah 6:8: ‘Here am I, send me’. She was faithful until the end, a missionary who put faithfulness to the Word of God and trust in his promises before every other consideration.
Looking at the life story of Amy Carmichael in south India and her Christ-centred missionary work, we in Christian service today, often working in difficult situations, find encouragement in God’s Word and his Spirit can wonderfully transform even difficult situations for those evangelising the Christian faith. Often in our little thoughts and work it seems he is delaying to work out his plan, but for him, for whom one day is 1000 years, and 1000 years one day, it is to have room for himself to work out his great thoughts. This tiny ‘sanctuary’ in south India, ‘a small plot of heaven’, where the Dohnavur Fellowship exists ‘with God for others’, will never be out of his control. And what about the future?:
There may be no future. Perhaps He will come for Whom we are all looking. But should there be a future, what can we do but train our children in truth and in love, and trust Him to open the way before them. We never deceive ourselves by imagining it will be easy for them. We are trying to prepare them to endure hardness, every kind of hardness, as good soldiers.2480
2476. Gold Cord, 72.
2477. The Continuation of a Story, 43 and 42.
2478. The Continuation of a Story, 43.
2479. Cf. Hebrews 12:1–2.
2480. Nor Scrip, 123.
Christ Jesus, the risen Lord, is in control and his pierced hands are over the Dohnavur Fellowship – her future is as sure as the promises of God. My story about Amy Carmichael has been told. For whom? Amy would agree when I say that it is written with the aim:
[T]o the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is Himself continually fulfilling the vision of the ladder set up on the earth, whose top reached to heaven, and to Whom the least of His lovers is dear.
It has been written for those who in the simplest find true things that quicken ‘the sense of the Unseen behind the seen’, and for whom ‘the temporal holds the seed of the Eternal’. In closing we read Amy’s remarks to Westcott’s note on John 11:21–22:2481
Martha said, ‘But I know that even now…’. Faith reaches forth to that which it does not grasp. ‘Even now’ – the utter abandon of faith that accepts what is not received. This is faith triumphant. […] We have our Lord’s own ‘Even so’ to help us. […] It is the ‘Yes Father’ of the unoffended, the ‘Even so, Father’ which accepts all mysteries.2482 The final words in Ponnamal2483 are the last words for this book:
It goes out into a world spent with suffering, wounded unto death. But death is not the end, it is only another beginning, and that which makes life lovable and glorious cannot die, for Love is eternal.
2481. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you’.
2482. In Whispers of His Power, 11 May 104.
2483. See page 118.
Chapter 22