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

of the old man. Each, “on the human side,” was broken. When, many years later, she held up before prospective missionary recruits the standard of the Cross of Jesus, no one could say she knew not whereof she spoke. If there was peace in her heart at that moment, it was nothing less than Jesus’ last gift to His own—“My own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears.”1 It was the peace her friends were singing about, “like a river glorious.” But it did not utterly cancel the pain. As the ship rounded the last corner there stood the Dear Old Man again, having hiked a half-mile down the docks for a last glimpse. They were close enough to call out Bible verses to each other and a phrase Amy remembered from the farewell meeting, “Jesus has two nail-pierced hands. He lays one upon each and parts us so—He does the parting.”

When the speck that was the dearest face finally disappeared, did she rush to her cabin and throw herself on the bunk sobbing? Not likely. Perhaps she waited by the rail until England dropped from sight, reviewing all the way the Lord had led her. Like Abraham, she did not know where she was going, and found comfort in the words of Genesis 12:1, “unto a land that I will show thee.” Like Abraham, she had by faith obeyed what she believed to be the voice of God.

How would she spend the weeks between England and Colombo where she would transship? She considered the options. There were games. She loved games. But she was a missionary now, and a missionary hasn’t time for games. She prayed for opportunities to speak of Christ to the sailors and fellow passengers. The captain himself asked her to put up Bible verses in his cabin “as a witness to all” that he had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

She wrote to the Keswick friends that she was “peacefully miserable,” that is, seasick. She paraphrased a hymn:

Peace, perfect peace, though seasick we can sing,

For even so we are beneath His wing.

On the first Sunday a service was held in the salon. Rough weather took the starch out of most of the passengers—“we sang hymns somewhat faintly”—and the congregation dwindled until a gentleman from first class suggested that the “Salvation Army ladies” (he had heard them singing hymns when they embarked—they must be Salvation Army) should address what Amy called the “survivors.” She and a German missionary gladly complied. She also held a Bible study down below the main hatchway each morning, “a little ‘All-One-in-Christ’ picture, a native Indian gentleman who is searching the records of the world’s religions to find the true one; a poor simple Lascar who once met a missionary who told him about Jesus and who clings to Him very wistfully as his ‘own One,’ a Chinaman, comical and eager who loves Him ‘muchly,’ and a nice old Ayah . . . met with us to read His book together.”

In the Bay of Biscay they sang another Keswick hymn, one stanza of which reads, “O how great Thy lovingkindness, vaster, broader than the sea.”2

Behind us lay the calm, dark waters stretching away and away, before us they shimmered in a glory of color and gold, above was the glow of eventide, underneath were the everlasting arms of a Love limitless as the encompassing ocean. . . . As we entered the Mediterranean He commanded His stormy wind to lash the quiet waters into a glorious fury. . . . Through the mighty rush and roar the old psalm sung itself chorus-fashion over and over, “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice. . . . The Lord on High is mightier than the noise of many waters.”3

As they steamed past the coast of “Darkest Africa” Amy saw one tiny light which typified for her how few spiritual light-bearers there were, and begged her correspondents not to go on leaving “the voiceless silence of despair” unanswered.

While traversing the Suez Canal they passed caravans of camels, pacing through the sand, followed by blue-robed, white-turbaned Arabs. As they passed camps, small boys rushed out and called for “baksheesh,” a handout of money. Seeing the “solemn Sinai ridge” with its bare red peaks and rolling desert, Amy thought of the people of Israel standing far off while Moses went up the mountain and into the thick darkness where God was. At Aden she saw for the first time “the great Need, face to face”—swarms of curio vendors and diving boys, clad in chocolate brown and little else, “without Christ, without hope, without God in the world.” Ceylon, a wonderland of rest to their sea-weary eyes, seemed like “a great peopled hothouse minus the glass.” In Colombo the missionaries were “taken possession of by brothers and sisters in Jesus,” driven over red sand roads to a bungalow where breakfast waited. Amy sat down to the little organ—glad of one that remained steady after the stormy passage—and played Samuel Rutherford’s hymn, “The Sands of Time are Sinking,” a Keswick favorite, as well as Frances Ridley Havergal’s “Like a River Glorious.” In Colombo as in Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Amy asked to see the mission work, and seemed to have Old Home Week with many who had been to Keswick, knew the Keswick songs, read the Keswick magazine, The Life of Faith.

When they boarded the SS Sutlej, they found their cabin already occupied by rats and cockroaches. This was a matter for prayer first (“We went and told Jesus”), followed by action (“then we spoke to the steward”). Amy printed a card with the words In everything give thanks, decorated the corners with the initials of their chief woes, and hung it in the cabin.

On the back of her last shipboard letter, dated April 13, there is a note, “Friday, April 14th—Arrived safely at Shanghai. ‘So He bringeth them into their desired haven.’ Found letters welcoming me to