Amy Carmichael

A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael by Elisabeth Elliot

Thirteen years ago I was a freshman at Michigan State University, young and quite shy. I was befriended by some kind girls who attended the same Christian Fellowship I was going to. One of them was a senior from India, a petite, spunky little gal with great enthusiasm for the Lord. I wish I could remember her name, but cannot. At some point in time I learned from her of a book about the life of Amy Carmichael, a British woman who spent most of her life serving others in the name of Christ in India. I loved hearing about missionaries and picked up the book sometime during the year. For close to 13 years that book has been on our bookshelf. I have so often looked at it thinking, "I should read that. I'd really like to read that. Why don't I read that soon? Well, it is long..."

This year I finally started it (isn't that half the battle sometimes?). In part at least because of hearing Amy Carmichael's name so much in our house. I had picked up a little book for Abraham, called Amy Carmichael: Can Brown Eyes Be Made Blue at the homeschooling conference I went to this spring.

He just loves it - what a great little story about how God answers prayer. Highly recommended...it's been read many times here already. (We have a few others by this author too, and really like her books.) Our favorite part is when Amy prays that God would make her brown eyes blue. The next morning when comforting her devastated daughter, Amy's mother tells her sometimes God answers yes, sometimes no, and sometimes wait. And that maybe someday she will learn why God answered no. Many years later Amy realized as she cared for Indian babies rescued from Temple prostitution that blue eyes would have been too scary for these displaced Indian children, but Amy's brown eyes fit naturally into the culture and she was able to comfort the children. Isn't that beautiful! She absolutely meant it, too. God orchestrates every little detail of our lives.


Elisabeth Elliot chronicles Amy Carmichael's life in a very simple, objective manner. She's a lovely biographer - although I haven't read too many biographies!

Amy was a spirited little girl from the start growing up in Ireland. By the age of 21 she was deeply involved in encouraging young women in the slums of Belfast. When their numbers grew and she needed a place for them to meet, Amy prayed for a building to be gifted. It was. Throughout the book this happens over and over. Amy was rarely daunted by circumstances. When she prayed about a situation and sensed God's direction, she could not be dissuaded that He would provide.

Eventually God called Amy to the country of India. She spent her next 53 years living in India, sharing Christ's love. "Utter holiness, crystal pure," was her desire. And part of that meant sharing life with others "precisely how things were."

Because missionary reports generally included more about successes than about failures, Amy tried to shift the weight to the other side. 'It is more important that you should know about the reverses than about the successes of the war.  We shall have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact of the reverses is so little realized, and the needed reinforcements are not forthcoming, as they would be if the position were thoroughly understood. . . So we have tried to tell you the truth - the uninteresting, unromantic truth.'

Amy's calling in India was first to evangelism and eventually to mothering. She was burdened for the babies offered to Temple priests and prayed earnestly to be able to rescue them and other children in "moral danger."  As God grew the number of children under the care of her and the women of the Band (the others initially involved in evangelism), their roles began to change.

The women of the Band were learning that if the Lord of Glory took a towel and knelt on the floor to wash the dusty feet of His disciples (the job of the lowest slave in an Eastern household), then no work, even the relentless and often messy routine of caring for squalling babies is demeaning. To offer it up to the Lord of Glory transforms it into a holy task. 'Could it be right,' Amy had asked, 'to turn from so much that might be of profit and become just nursemaids?' The answer was yes. It is not the business of the servant to decide which work is great, which is small, which important or unimportant - he is not greater than his master.

'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 crave, when in truth it is the interesting and exciting, then I know nothing of Calvary love,' Amy wrote after many years of such "unspiritual" work.

To be continued...