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

in His Book and in my heart His peace and joy are dwelling. Is not joy better than much learning?”

Not till afterwards did Amy learn that the woman was a temple woman, a prostitute, “married to the gods,” whose life was spent in the service of the priests and worshippers. Not one from among them had ever been converted. No one had ever been allowed to work among them. The discovery of this system was like a sword in Amy’s missionary soul. Something must be done. Someone must find a way somehow to touch these women for God.

1. “The first Englishman to camp among the people of India as a missionary of Christ.” Amy Carmichael, Ragland, Spiritual Pioneer (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1951). p. vi.

2. Luke 14:26 NEB.

3. Ponnammal: Her Story gives the date of her joining the itinerant band as June 1897.

4. Acts 16:14.

Chapter 18

The Cost of Obedience

The great passion of Amy Carmichael’s life was uttermost love, which meant uttermost obedience. The prayer of Jeremy Taylor was always hers: Lord, do Thou turn me all into love, and all my love into obedience, and let my obedience be without interruption.

This was the spirit she sought to instill in the members of the Starry Cluster. The question of jewels illustrates their earnestness. Jewels, a word which embraced all gold or silver necklaces, bracelets, bangles, and rings (for nose, ears, and ankles as well as fingers), were, in Tinnevelly, by far the most important elements in a woman’s appearance. “It is a pretty custom,” Amy wrote, “and we thought nothing of it. Our Band members wore the usual quantity. It is considered part of their dress.” Its significance, however, went far beyond prettiness. Women were more or less sold to their husbands for so many rupees’ worth of jewels—a man with a B.A. could command so many, an M.A. so many, this caste so many, that one so many. In this way the quantity of jewels a woman wore declared her husband’s honor as well as her family’s wealth.

Amy herself wore no jewels of any kind. A strict Irish Presbyterian upbringing probably forbade such vanity, so her desire to identify with Indian style could not allow her to go so far. Nor did she oil her hair, a fact which made her startlingly conspicuous. She gave in once and anointed her head in order to avoid the inevitable remarks, but the scent she found “prohibitive.” The very few photos we have of her reveal beautiful, soft, wavy, dark hair, in distinct contrast to the gleaming, sharply parted, satin smoothness of the Indians’ hair. Her bun was not worn low on the neck as was theirs. It is doubtful that her upbringing included any special sanctions regarding coconut oil or the exact elevation of a hair bun. It is more likely that the flat, tight look did not strike Amy as particularly becoming to herself. Vanity (probably unrecognized) made her willing to differ here, as the notion of physical protection made her willing to differ in the matter of foreign shoes, sun helmet, and umbrella, things which identified her unmistakably with colonials.

“Gradually as we sought to know more of our Lord and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, the conviction grew upon us that these things (i.e. jewels) were out of place in His own chosen workers—His separated ones—and that this conforming to the law of the fashion of this world was of the flesh and not of the Spirit.” Hair oil, hairstyles, and shoes were not, in Amy’s view, an indication of conformity to the world’s fashion, any more than were topees and umbrellas, which were believed indispensable if foreigners’ brains were not to melt.

Jewels, on the other hand, were in a separate category. “I love the old native customs. I cannot bear the foreignizing element so common in much mission work in India, so it was much against the grain that I faced this thing at all. But here God’s Word ran one way and custom another. There was no help for it. We prayed that if God wanted the question raised He would raise it among our workers, apart from us, and He did.”

A man had asked that his wife be allowed to travel with the Band for a while in order to learn to serve others. They consented, and he came one day to ask her to give him her jewels. He did not think them appropriate for the sort of life he desired for her. Ponnammal overheard his words with intense interest. Only the evening before she had heard a child (referring to Ponnammal) say, “When I grow up I will join that Band so that I may wear jewels like that sister.” Ponnammal asked the Lord about this and the answer came, “Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.” The message was unmistakable. She saw herself as the Indian world would see her—unjewelled, a marked woman, an eyesore, an offense. To take off her jewels was unnatural, disgraceful, even hypocritical. But in the Lord’s eyes? He would see the love that lay behind the action. She went home, took off the jewels, laid them at His feet.

“Lord, Thou didst empty Thyself for me. I empty myself for Thee.” One by one the other women of the Band followed. The “outside Christian world” laughed them to scorn, but an English preacher, F. B. Meyer, came just in time to strengthen the Band in its conviction. He was the first they had ever heard mention the jewel question. Other women who heard him saw it as utterly impossible. “Where would my glory be if I took them off?” said one. “Where would my husband’s be? Tinnevelly women never will!” So the Band became a “peculiar people,” knit together in their desire to be “otherworldly, separate unto Jesus.” When