A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot (best book recommendations .TXT) 📕

our neighbor as ourselves. . . . It is possible to cast every care on Him daily, and to be at peace amidst pressure, to see the will of God in everything, to put away all bitterness and clamor and evil speaking, daily and hourly. It is possible by unreserved resort to divine power under divine conditions to become strongest through and through at our weakest point.1

What Keswick stood for Amy Carmichael stood for. The great principles enunciated in the tent described precisely what she most longed for and were echoed in her writings for the rest of her life. Before the convention she had been pondering the agonizing question of the fate of those who had never heard of Jesus Christ. It was as though she heard “the cry of the heathen,” and could not rest because she could not gladly stay at home and do nothing about them. During that week she prayed specifically for rest from that “cry,” though the thought that God might actually call her to go to them did not cross her mind. The convention was “an unforgettable time,” and resulted in “a new committal of one’s whole life.”

Mr. Wilson, a widower whose only daughter had died when she was just Amy’s age, had by this time become a close friend of the Carmichael family. The children, who called him “the D.O.M.,” for Dear Old Man, visited him often in his home, Broughton Grange. He was a lonely man in a bleak household with two bachelor sons in their late thirties. Amy’s visits became more and more indispensable to him, until he asked her mother if Amy might become his “daughter.” She consented, and so it was that the “corner” she had turned at the Belfast convention in 1887—her meeting Mr. Wilson when he called at their home—led to a new and important phase of her missionary training.

In 1890 she moved to Broughton Grange, God’s “appointed school,” in a beautiful setting in England’s Lake District, above the river Derwent, with a glorious view of the Cumbrian Range from Skiddaw to Scafell.

Wilson was a Friend (Quaker), but for years superintended the Baptist Sunday school and later attended the Anglican church on Sunday evenings. Amy, the Irish Presbyterian, learned to value the silence of the Quaker meetings and the beauty of the Anglican service. The varied ways in which Christian worship found expression illuminated for her the Keswick motto, chosen by Wilson, “All one in Christ Jesus.”

One day as the two were driving a gig along a country road they came upon a stone breaker. Pulling up the old horse, Charlie, the D.O.M. turned to Amy. “Which blow breaks the stone?” he asked. Then, pointing with his whip he said, “Thee must never say, thee must never even let thyself think, ‘I won that soul for Christ.’ It is the first blow and the last, and every one in between.”

It was he who told her of the three inscriptions over the doors of the Milan Cathedral. One, with a carving of roses, says, “All that pleases is but for a moment”; another, with a carving of a cross, says, “All that grieves is but for a moment”; and over the great central door are only the words, “Nothing is important but that which is eternal.”

It is not surprising that the Wilson sons found Amy’s presence in the house disturbing. Her relationship with their father was at least unusual, probably an interference with whatever communication they had had with him, and certainly an interruption to the routines they were used to. They did not welcome her, and she knew it, but years later, when missionary work thrust her into close quarters with others whose styles differed from hers and whose approval she did not win, she saw that this aspect of Broughton Grange had also been a part of her necessary training.

Amy helped in meetings of the Scripture Union on Tuesday evenings, where the Wilson sons participated. The fact that she was the one who usually gave the address and was immensely popular with the children who attended may not have enhanced the fellowship she had with the two men, any more than did her inviting a number of girls to the Grange on Saturdays. They would take over the library, play games, have a Bible class, tour the garden, and devour milk and gingerbread.

The year 1890 marks the first publication (unless we count Scraps) of a piece by Amy B. Carmichael. She made a tour of the villages of the Clyde with Miss Hannah Govan of the Faith Mission. Bright Words, the organ of the mission, carried Amy’s story about a shawlie, “Fightin’ Sail,” converted at The Welcome.

Amy always took note of spiritual milestones, keeping records of the dates on which God had met her in some special way. None marks a greater crisis than January 13, 1892. It was on that snowy Wednesday evening that the categorical imperative came, not just once but again and again: Go ye. The “rest from the cry of the heathen” for which she had prayed at Keswick four years before had been “only half answered,” and now it was clear that she was to go. But how could she? The D.O.M. needed her. She had taken it for granted that she would stay with him until he went to heaven, but “crashing through that thought came a word I could not escape and dare not resist.” How did the word come? Was it audible? Visible, like the handwriting on Belshazzar’s wall? Was it a deep impression on her impressionable mind? She had had a talk with her “Fatherie” that afternoon. She went back to her own room, and, as clearly as a human voice, she heard God say, GO YE. It was inescapable, irresistible.

Amy at Broughton Grange, about twenty-four.

The next day she sat down at the writing table in the beautiful old house. The house she could relinquish. The gorgeous view of the river and the gentle mountains she