Loving God enough to break ancient rules (part 1 of 6)
Chapter 22
Loving God enough to break ancient rules
Secluded openness
Amy, a genuine missionary, lived in a quiet place far from the buzzing city life, with no concern for fame or recognition. She was ‘praise-proof’. The strain of a continuously busy life, the hot climate of Tinnevelly district and the prolonged invalidity of the latter years took a toll upon her frail body. But she continued ‘climbing’ and the ‘fight’ went on. Yet, there is no doubt that she would welcome anyone to come and see what had been done to save children from a life of shame and vileness. Her life, given to God in a way only few accepted, will always bear fruit because of the work of the Holy Spirit. Amy gave all she was and had into the hands of her Saviour. Despite her clear conservative beliefs, she set a movement in motion – motivated through her belief! – of which today the end can still not be predicted; the south Indian world she touched has changed forever. She succeeded in overcoming the often-felt ambivalence between a worldwide horizon and the strict Presbyterian upbringing, merging the two nicely together.
In Belfast as in India she was not afraid to oppose some accepted canon of convention. The Dohnavur Fellowship has an openness, always secured by biblical standards, and this openness to adjust aims and priorities is a hallmark of an organisation that is sensitive to the cultures in which it operates. Amy steered the middle way between the Scylla of continuous attacks and ignorance of her contemporaries and the Charybdis of a realised vision exemplified in the Dohnavur Fellowship. Today’s Santhosha Vidhyalaya Secondary School is a sign that the Fellowship’s staff members wholeheartedly keep themselves following Amy’s vision. ‘The missions she established in Ireland and in India more than a century ago still flourish to this day and the influence of her writings is beyond measure.’2377
Today she is credited by many in India and abroad for having changed the moral lives of many boys and girls, a benefit for Christian families and the society as a whole; she was a woman ‘prepared to be
2377. In the preface of Maxwell, Amy’s Tin Tabernacle, 11.
How to cite: Kommers, J. (Hans), 2017, ‘Loving God enough to break ancient rules’, in Triumphant Love: The contextual, creative and strategic missionary work of Amy Beatrice Carmichael in south India, pp. 553–586, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2017.tl41.22 unconventional’.2378 By the light and the love of the Gospel, age-old practices were elucidated.2379 She was able to see things others did not see. Her visionary insights proved to be from God, and that is the reason why we cannot bypass her anymore in the missionary debate. You learn so much from the life of this remarkable missionary’s life that now, coming to the end of our study, we come away feeling like somehow we have been mentored by this woman. Stella Entwistle’s words are so true for Amy: ‘You will know the saints, and they will know you, if they see the light of God’s love shining through’.2380 She had her private communion with God, and what was felt and expressed deep in her heart remains hidden for curious eyes and ears, but she was so transparent, showing us a life in which the light of God’s love was shining through.
The photograph of Amy in so many houses and other buildings within the Dohnavur Fellowship’s extensive compound in India, in the Welcome Church in Belfast (Northern Ireland) and in homes all over the world, remind the people of God, of the one who symbolises all that was done in love in a missionary life. For many she belonged to that realm which is above criticism. A sinner saved by grace who longed for the day to see ‘God’s jewels’, the children of India, and all those who live in darkness, part of Christ’s crown. In the creation of the Dohnavur Fellowship a unique mixture of devotional and practical elements of Christian expression come together. Elements of the early Church, Mediaeval mystics, French monastic piety, Moravian organisation and Keswick holiness formed Amy’s piety along with the actual day-to-day business in Dohnavur. Her story is so exceptional that any retelling of it is bound to be a good read. Although we affirm Amy Carmichael as one of God’s great servants in the first part of the 20th century, still we have to bring into focus that as a true missionary, faithful to God, a woman of prayer and power, she was an unusual character, in fact a missionary who seemed to have had a highly idiosyncratic factor. She seems to have learnt to celebrate her strengths while working on her weaknesses, knowing her own shortcomings. A woman who every day underwent God’s judgement over her life as she needed his blessing. From the throne of grace she was willing to give herself for others.
Though unknown to the world, she was a true servant of the risen Lord Jesus; an example of a Christlike sacrifice and consecration for the healing of a big sore in south India’s Hindu communities. She saw what many did not see or did not want to see, the grotesque, religiously sanctioned, hidden abuse of little children. She rose up and stood in the gap between this evil practice and decent society. People had to see what she saw and know what she knew of evil that had to be stopped. And she not only used her voice and pencil, but her hands created a safe haven for hundreds of children in danger who were saved. Her love is at the heart of the Christian Gospel, and was part of her from childhood when she learned the love of God, a love so amazing, the love from Christ Jesus’ widespread arms on the Cross.
Her memory is fragrant and transparent, exposed in her work in Dohnavur and revealed in her books and poems. A long life of hard work toiling with head and hand, but all done with a heart of intercession for the children in danger and their future after they were saved. Daily you could find her in the nurseries, kitchen and office; all these places were meeting places at the Throne of Grace, to be continued after she became bedridden. She sacrificed her heart’s affections in the cause of the Dohnavur Fellowship and all the people there. All done in an unpretending way and with a calm perseverance which continued to the end of her life. She could not have done more, for she gave herself.
With her preference for the writings of the mystics and the well-organised structure of the Dohnavur Fellowship we get the impression of a ‘seclusive identity’ in the south Indian plain where Amy as the
2378. Jacky Woolcock in the foreword of Williamson, Amy Carmichael, XII.
2379. Cf. here Paul who saw the triumph of Christ when he wrote: ‘He disarmed the principalities and powers, and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in Him’ (RVS), Colossians 2:15.
2380. In S. Miller, I Can Trace A Rainbow (Singapore: OMF, 1988), 33.
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spiritual director – even until her death from her long sickbed – dictated her ideas, drawn from the Scriptures, guided and served the whole community. In all her work she needed to have divine sanction from the Scriptures; in the way Scripture was interpreted we see Amy’s own blend of mysticism and practicality, in which we can trace her own prejudices. In her mission principles she moved within the biblical principles as the majority of evangelicals at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century saw them as their line. However, from the very beginning, in 1893, she gave her own interpretation, and independently since 1927 went her own way. Amy, who saw much nominal Christianity in India, like Walker, put her mind on God, personal piety exercised in love, prayer and patience, all in a conventional setting with some ascetic traces, with vows of poverty and obedience and she herself acting as mother superior. She never lived in isolation and with her eyes open to the world she transformed Christian life in such a way that it fitted the needs of the world. She never condemned the work in other missions and had high respect for many others in India as well as in England who faithfully did their God-given work. She could ask advice from others, but turned everything of value for her into her own moulding. She did not allow Biblical interpretations to become a flight of personal fancy, although her exegetical material give us many original thoughts of interpretation.
As in the lives of Madame Guyon and Theresa of Avila who, as abbesses, ruled their convents in obedience to a male supervisor and confessor – for instance François de Sales – Amy in the first years, from 1898 to 1912, leaned heavily on Thomas Walker, who gave a lot of advice.2381 In itinerating work Amy followed the Walkers and, once settled in Dohnavur, this also became the spin-off place for Walker who resided here when no outside campaign was on the agenda.
Like women visionaries Amy shared God’s talk, revealed to her from the Scriptures, with others. She always remained close to the Scriptures and never let her thoughts wander in far-away ecstatic talk and thought. She had cultivated for herself a devotion not free from mystical elements.2382 She sought for herself to be in absolute obedience and subjection to God. In her seeking of the spiritual communion with Christ she never went as far as her Roman Catholic sisters did, because she never left the Bible guidance. She knew her God from his revelation of himself in the Scriptures, not through visions or mysticism.
She lived her Christian life in a community, in contact with children and many grown-up people. She did not live a life in seclusion, nor in a way of self-imposed abnegation of the body and extra Biblical meditative techniques. What attracted her in Madame Guyon and Teresa of Avila was their independent way of ruling a convent, and their devotion to Christ. Not unworldly, they managed in many difficulties to be focused on the one thing necessary.2383 Amy in a certain sense had something of a Catholic and a unifying spirit.2384 The way she operated will help a new generation of mission workers who often have to do the work in complex cross-cultural mission situations where they find overt opposition to the message that is brought and cannot even count on full support from everyone involved in Church work.
2381. ‘Amy was a kind of Teresa of Avila, matching the Spanish reformer in her zeal, in her devotion to Christ and to her charges, and also in the intense and contradictory elements of her dominating temperament’ (Davies, Genius and Grace, 204). 2382. Cf. G. Davies: ‘She had the genius for expressing the mystical Christian insight’; ‘the frequent quotations from great Christian mystics and missionaries of the past are as enchanting as ever’; ‘Amy was very aware of the spiritual world and was by any standard a Christian mystic’ (Genius and Grace, 193).
2383. Not only Amy, but as shown in Severance, Feminine Threads, 209–210, the missionary Adoniram Judson in Burma, the preacher Charles Spurgeon and the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, refer to Madame Guyon, whose writings benefitted them.
2384. Amy from her father’s side descended from the Covenanters, and on her mother’s side she was a Dalziel (in old Scots, ‘I dare’), from the Royalists who persecuted the Covenanters. In her own spiritual life, she more or less unified these two.
Presenting God’s message in our present day, the mission worker, to determine his strength and weaknesses, needs a framework in which to operate and to decide about the priorities.
Amy did not reject institutional Christianity, as many of her Quaker friends, did, but created her own way of serving the Lord in the community, where the personal experience of Christ was sought after and was lived by the Scriptures. There is order during the services in the House of Prayer. The quietness and the silence, the singing and worship are integral elements of the service.2385 Her meditatively praying the Scripture and an inward holiness through God’s personal work in her heart encouraged her to have a godly Christian life independent of human work and institutional Church rituals. Like Count Zinzendorf, who not only offered a place of refuge for those who fled persecution, but also became the leader of the Moravians, Amy too in the organisation in Dohnavur, separated the sexes in the community where each individual was assigned to a particular group. The church service was done together but also here, boys and girls were separated, as it is customary in rural India. Harmony within all the groups got priority and sins had to be confessed.
The two pinnacles on top of the House of Prayer tower, not found in the usual Tamil Nadu architecture but Amy’s invention, were the indication of the adoration, the love to God and the love reaching out to others. Her devotion was spiritual and this led her to leave the track of printed liturgical material that used age-old patterns in which there was no life left. In her vision of holiness the Dohnavur congregation had to be as the Bride of Christ.
A real inspiration
The intention of this broader research was to get a closer and clearer picture of Amy Carmichael as the founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship. Also to give a balanced account of her dealings with people and especially her life with God. From these perspectives, I studied her background and spiritual development. The more I immersed myself in her written work and tried to fathom her thoughts, the more I admire her and thank God for such a gift to the children of India, and to the missionary world. My research in Belfast and my stay for some weeks in Dohnavur, where I could speak with many who knew Amy personally, completed the circle, and I feel, even with all the years between us, that I could somehow really touch her and talk with her. She was a child of her time and lived against it. She did her work in Dohnavur in a time that saw two world wars. In a desert-like place she lived in a fast, absolute, solitary way, but it was a world on its own. In this ‘small world’ we have met a great personality, who through solitariness succeeded in reaching an extraordinary activity. The fascination originating from her is the fascination that comes from a life lived in holiness for the solitariness became a school of godliness. She was called for a communal walk with God, and therefore she had to avoid all unnecessary companionship. She saved many children from a life of shame and became a soul-guide for many across the world. As a virtuous letter writer she encouraged many downhearted and sick people all over the world.
The present author has not sought to defend all her views in every detail. She would not have expected me to do so; she stood before her God and lifted up her eyes to him expecting everything from him. Amy’s legacy has remained and has been publicly honoured and remembered. From time to time her work is studied which results in a publication. Several of her books are still reprinted and have a wide reader interest. Many of her letters and works are well kept and preserved in Belfast’s PRONI archive. Faithful workers in Dohnavur continue her work in the way she would have liked. There are more tangible reminders of Amy and her work. The Welcome Evangelical Church in Belfast (the
2385. Like Madame Guyon ‘seeking Christ, by a quiet faith, not by outward ceremonies’ (Severance, Feminine Threads,
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former Welcome which Amy started) erected a commemoration tablet and on 19 August 2016 opened a new Amy Carmichael Centre to continue the legacy of Amy Carmichael.
In Dohnavur each year, on 16 December, a party for all staff and children remember her birthday, during which many stories about her are re-told. Today ‘the name of Dohnavur deserves to be as well remembered as that of Lambarene, where Albert Schweitzer built his hospital’.2386
In her we meet a real missionary of Christ and not one as so many in her time a missionary representing the Christian civilisation of the West. For those to whom she was sent, she longed to see that they got redemption and that conversion to the living God was a reality. ‘The cross is the attraction’, and for her the Cross stood against the lurid sky of history in the shape of a great key – the key of holiness and love and redemption.2387 The practical consequence of this view is seen in her Dohnavur Fellowship where spiritual and physical lives were set free and boys and girls could grow up in a normal way. Word or deed? For her it was not a question:
For us the special call is to serve our generation by doing ordinary things to the glory of God. It is not scriptural to divide life into sections and call one secular, the other sacred. All is sacred. Our Lord’s walk on earth shows no other attitude of mind. He recognised no dividing line. So why should we? The one aim of all our work is to lead each man, woman and child to our Saviour and to teach them how to follow Him as dear children (Ephesians 5:1), and thus prepare them for His use and lead them out into His service.2388 Her love for Christ translated itself in her love and compassion for those in peril.2389 She just did what the Lord asked her to do, to sacrifice herself, to be an instrument in his hands. She had learned from Madame Guyon that ‘God often makes His will known only in the time of action’.2390 The Gospel of Christ provides the solution for prevailing sin, but also in individual and social life:
If by doing some work which the undiscerning consider ‘not spiritual work’ I can best help others, and I inwardly rebel, thinking it is the spiritual for which I care, when in truth it is the interesting and exciting, then I know nothing of Calvary love.2391 In Overweights of Joy is a passage in which she indicates what the cost is of doing mission work and the full dependence upon God’s creative power:
But ‘crying’ is not nearly enough. We look to you, brothers of India, to do. Many can talk and many can write, and more will do both, as the years pass, but the crux is contained in the doing. God alone can strengthen you for it. He who set His face as a flint, can make you steadfast and brave enough to set your faces as flints, till the bands of wickedness are loosed, and the heavy burdens are undone, and every yoke is broken, and the oppressed go free. It will cost. It is bound to cost. Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood. It is only sham battles that cost something less than blood. Everything worth anything costs blood. She urged strongly not to compare in the Kingdom of God the work of one with that of another and not to discern among each other of what is more or less spiritual:
2386. Davies, Genius and Grace, 195.
2387. The image of the ‘key’ I borrowed from S.M. Zwemer, Thinking Missions with Christ, 3rd edn. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1935), 49.
2388. Fragments That Remain, 25.
2389. Here we can think of Luther’s expression: ‘A Christian is a Christ to others’.
2390. Cf. her annotations in Madame Guyon’s Spiritual Letters, in the Dohnavur library.
2391. If, 43.
Each was a pioneer missioner, each was a flame of fire. […] But the conditions under which each worked varied as widely as they varied climatically. Can we compare their work [Amy was writing about the work of Brainerd in North America and Henry Martin in India and Persia], or measure it by its visible results? Did God? Let us leave off comparing this with that – we do not know enough to compare. Let us leave off weighing eternal things and balancing souls in earthly scales. Only God’s scales are sufficiently sensitive for such delicate work as that.2392 All her time in India she met fierce opposition, which she met with prayer, believing that through prayer victory will be gained. During the beginning of the 20th century, millennial thoughts were very strong among missionaries. Many adherents of Keswick agreed with the pre-millennial view. The burden to evangelise the world weighed heavily on them as they saw that the millennial clocks ticked only to the midnight hour. The great commission had to be completed before Christ’s return. In the expectancy of the ‘last days’2393 outpouring of the Spirit grew more intense. Amy did not actively propagate the pre-millennial view – she was too much of Presbyterian breed – but more or less agreed with it. Her pre-millennial view demanded from her that what she was doing was for eternity and from that was this sense of other-worldliness, of stewardship, a supreme sense of the urgency of her task.
All our work, and that Amy knew, is under the searchlight of eternity. Amy could be quiet amidst the turmoil of her time and amidst the daily problems she faced in Dohnavur; amidst everything towers the Cross, as a tower of strength. She was not the only outstanding missionary during the first half of the 20th century, but what made her so special is her walking independently of self, straight to God, proving in her own life of what she had written, never ‘off duty’ and always living and working in the knowledge that the Cross is the attraction. In a certain deep joy she shared in Christ’s sufferings. She followed her life course and by her hands, her words and her deeds she passed Christ’s love to thousands of children, faithful to her high calling. By life and lip at every point, she reflected the glory of the great Shepherd. The Spirit of Christ Jesus was pre-eminently manifested in her life and character.
In our world today, so completely different from 150 years ago, to a generation which is introduced to the rat race in modern society in which there is an increasing scramble to keep ahead, in such a loveless way of life people need the healing ministry of Christ of comfort and consolation.
Amy showed us, like a caring mother to her little children, the stern note in God’s Word to preach the Gospel to the people and to apply the balm of it, the blood of Christ, to the spiritual and physical wounds. The secret part of her life, not seen by many and of which she rarely talked, was her disciplined life of prayer. She lived all that she preached.
Scholars and government personnel, not directly connected with Christianity, could appreciate the work that was done.2394 Done in a world of almost a growing, unprecedented political and social instability – even India’s independence in 1947 was a year of much brutal bloodshed. In this situation Amy restored with her Dohnavur Fellowship a sanctuary in a kind of church life in the pattern of the New Testament. In this setting she offered radical solutions: the principles taught by Jesus himself. She was a motivator, an inspirer, breaking fresh ground. Others capable of further transforming her work and vision were inspired by her to apply it to the spheres of their own.
Amy’s integral missionary method applied in the image of a servant-like Fellowship is an example of a creative balanced Biblical encultured act against all institutionalising of the power of self-love. Her paradigm invites us to shift our attention from searching for great things to the ‘one thing necessary’, for
2392. Things As They Are, 281.
2393. Cf. Joel 2:28–29.
2394. For example Dr Mutthu Laksmi (Madras), Mr F.R. Hemmingway (Indian Civil Service), Gwen Pakenham Walsh (State Commissioner). Also in the awarding of the Kaiser-I-Hind medal for services to the people of India in 1919.
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every follower of Christ, and to make the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus present in a life of conversion and spirituality for this generation. From her we learn, that we are ‘a little flock’ (Lk 12:32), people on a pilgrimage in this third millennium with a high and a demanding vocation. This applies to the Indian mind, for the Indian Christians are thinking Christians.2395 Her fame as a missionary, even during her life, is beyond any question. In many aspects she broke new ground, although in retrospect it is clear how much she was influenced by her spiritual upbringing in Northern Ireland and by her Keswick affiliation. She was a missionary who placed no restrictions on God.
Her thoughts and the perils of innocent children in India were brought to the utmost parts of the world by her letters and books. It seems hard to believe, but she has stood out all these 56 years in India as a unique soul in her indomitable courage, hopefulness, and patient love, as well as in all her natural gifts, creating in Dohnavur an atmosphere of love, praise and joy. She was consistent in her love of Christ and in her love for the Indian people. The Bible was for her a never-ending fountain of inspiration. In expounding the Scriptures – sometimes they came as ‘scraps’ to the Dohnavur family – she found ‘gold’ which she applied to the actual Dohnavur situation with which she encouraged the sick with a right word at the right time. There is a strong element of consecutiveness in all her work. She remained, where others moved around and travelled a lot. Where the Lord had allocated her, there she blossomed. Her core beliefs and mission thoughts never varied; she became a touchstone of mission enterprise and represented an era, which ended at the time she died. She was one of the cherished missionaries, bred by the late Victorian evangelical piety of the second half of the 19th century that swept over the country; a missionary with the one vision of changing hearts and circumstances, and she did! By her life, work, words and books she also shaped the ongoing mission of the Lord’s people.
The spiritual sphere in the Dohnavur Fellowship was all-important. Holiness to the Lord engraved in her heart and this characterised her whole mission work. A pioneer who presented a most inspiring example of Christian love, courage and perseverance. Far above Ireland, England and India still sound her prayers; her books are an inspiration, a mine of wealth, and treasure rooms in which history and Christ’s work in history are to be seen. In Dohnavur she showed us what she stood for. With the smallest means on a very little scale, she reached the greatest. It did not come from rational work, but was due to her understanding of the candescence of the Lord, his gracious incarnation on earth. Amy’s theology was that she unfolded the incarnation of Christ under the theme of service. The Lord’s dominion and sovereignty is service. The hereanchored Christology cannot be by-passed to the deaconship. God’s servitude has consequences. The more you govern, the more you serve. By service, one governs, by renouncing one saves.
The question was raised, ‘Did Amy ever make mistakes?’ After her death in 1951, the Fellowship grew quite large. The young ones were getting older and government regulations tightened. The Fellowship was hemmed in by its own success, but could not cope with the fast-growing, changing attitudes in India. Amy and her colleagues of earlier days are the first to admit their own fallibility, as Nancy Robbins writes.2396 But are we in a position to criticise them? In their life with God, in their example of single-minded devotion as well as their undeviating sincerity in seeking, knowing and doing God’s will, it is not to us to put the blame on them. On the contrary, we thank the Lord for having given us women like Amy Carmichael who changed life’s values for little children and offered women a life of peace with God. Their spiritual maturity put them in a position far above many of their colleagues of today. Amy herself disliked any indulgence in personal publicity on the part of Christians. She rarely referred to herself in her publications but she will have an ongoing history. Her spirit seemed so indelibly to mark her 50-year-long work that her life and work still goes on.
2395. We can say that the Indian Church is a thinking Church, the European and North American Church a rationalistic Church, the South American Church a social Church, and the African Church a singing Church.
2396. In Not Forgetting to Sing, 108.
In Dohnavur the influence of Amy is now, after more than 60 years, still felt and many across the world feel inspired by her. She made people decide, which changed the current of their lives. Her influence exerted upon individual souls is still alive and operative. As a missionary she had no piles of cards signed, no numbers of converts. No! But one can feel and share the sense of the eternal in all her doing.2397 Dohnavur came to stand for a special kind of spirituality. In Davies’s words:
It is in her gift for expressing her devotion to Christ and to His service that Amy Carmichael’s name lives on. She took the best of a certain type of Keswick teaching – very different from that of the last few decades – and infused it with a blend of many Christian traditions and ways of thinking which she had derived, in the first place, from her links with Robert Wilson. For her, ‘The Higher Christian Life’ became a question of finding, to use well-worn phrases from childhood arithmetic, not the lowest common denominator but rather the highest common factor. I have spoken to some distinguished Christians who were alarmed at the books found in her bedroom when she died. But Amy made no secret of them in her account in Gold Cord: Our meetings were mainly in English. Except our Bible and the Pilgrim’s Progress, there were no books in Tamil […] Rolle, Suso and Tersteegen […] Bishop Moule and Josephine Butler of our own time, and Thomas a Kempis, pupil of Grote and brother of the Common life. Samuel Rutherford and Père Didon, brothers in spirit though divided by the letter of the law, and the brave and burning souls of every age, these had left torches.2398 God’s model biographies in the Bible faithfully portray sins and mistakes of judgement as well as acts of faith and obedience, and during writing I had in my mind to do the same. Amy, when she was young might have been an impulsive, daring Irish personality, but she lived a singularly even life in the mission field with the faith she had learned in her childhood as the thread which guided her through the maze of her mission life.
She never hesitated – after having talked with her Father – to take firm action when others had different opinions about the affairs of the Fellowship. It cost her dearly at times to refuse advice of others in cases she thought that she had to obey God’s guidance. Never was she to say, ‘It does not matter’. Her example of sacrifice and obedience inspired countless others, both in missionary service and in motherhood. A woman with a message, who knew experimentally Jesus Christ as the only rock and foundation, for herself as for the Dohnavur Fellowship. The task of intercession, establishing a daily prayer time – day by day she schooled herself in meditation and in reading the Scriptures. In her communion with God there was a holy intimacy. It was the simplicity of a child in faith.
She faced a lot of opposition, which she looked straight in the face, talking, discussing, pleading even with government officials and in courtrooms. Having set her hand to the plough she would not look back. What she undertook, she accomplished, not willing to be distracted from the road she saw before her. What she did, she believed was from God, and therefore she rather suffered all than disobey. She observed the people she met and sorted out thoroughly the things put on her way. ‘It is only as we look and look, that we really see; and the more we know of the thing at which we look, the more we see in it.’2399 Eager always to know and to see more of Jesus Christ:
How much are our eyes able to see of our Lord Jesus? […] I want more and more to see His goodness and His beauty, not vaguely, intermittently, but truly and continually, in His work, in His dear lovers, in His Book, in Himself.2400
2397. Nesaruthina Carunia, in an interview with the author, 16 November 2013, in Dohnavur.
2398. In Genius and Grace, 206. I, the author, spent several days in her room and all the books there went through my fingers. I also wondered about the wealth of literature and the extent and wideness of her reading. Many a theologian cannot touch that!
2399. Thou Givest … They Gather, 203.
2400. Thou Givest … They Gather, 203.
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She did not ask of others an obedience which she was not prepared to render herself to those above her in the Lord. In the exercise of authority in the Fellowship, she took a humble part when she sensed she might have hurt someone and was prepared to confess her impatience and when someone had to be punished she did it in a way that the victim saw she was most hurt in her heart. In small talk or the lighter side of life, she showed no interest. The experience near the fountain in Belfast on that memorial Sunday had definitely changed her life’s values. She saw the very need of the people:
Sitting down on the wide low steps I looked long, looked till the scene was burnt upon my very soul. Would that I could dip my pen in liquid fire, and burn it upon yours.2401 In the quiet hours Amy had been thinking over the matter of the general outlines of advance, of how the Dohnavur Fellowship should keep to Indian lines socially. She did not want the Fellowship to be run on a European line. ‘Amma did not want English leadership after her death.’ ‘India should be run by Indian leadership.’2402 In Amy’s own words regarding the Dohnavur Fellowship: ‘Always the missionary element is to the fore’.2403
She started a mission which has lasted more than 100 years. Aside from her mission experience as ‘mother’, counsellor, prayer leader, educator and facilitator, other influences on her missiology include her Biblical and theological convictions, and Keswick leaders. Thomas Walker, Hudson Taylor and others have helped to shape Amy’s understanding of practical mission work. Thomas Walker also gave her deep insight into the Hindu culture and thinking. Mission work was in her opinion a fight. Missionaries are constantly engaged in spiritual warfare.2404 To be a match for Amy does not mean that we have to return to the situation as it formerly was in Dohnavur. When she forces us to make decisions, to go in her footsteps, that does not mean that we go ‘in Amy’s harness’. Amy has left us an unfinished heritage. She has started something that is pushing us ahead. Her heritage is for us a God-given task. Her heritage is a future, still for us in the inner closure of what she began.
Today, some of the accents she laid have shifted in a certain way. We cannot just continue in an uncritical way; it would not be fair to her. But I think that we have to take it on us anew and to rethink Amy’s expressions and mission aim seriously. In mission work we have to keep on thinking of the essentials, knowing that the honour and the height of a Christian fall together with the depth of their fear of the Lord. They who do not fear the Lord, cannot control themselves. Without the fear of the Lord all mission work remains powerless. Man or woman, they personally are important for God, and as a member of Christ’s people on earth we are here to praise and adore him.