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

For seven years, almost without a break, Amy worked in the country towns and villages. Her letters tell story after story of the battle—Hindu houses practically impregnable; an inquirer now and then who gives great hope, only to disappear again behind the thick walls; the drama of discovering one bright, eager face in a crowd, of having the breathtaking joy of teaching that one for a brief time and then the sorrow of seeing him turn his back.

Treasure was a girl apparently divinely prepared for the Seed of the Word. It fell into her heart as into “good ground,” sprang up, was tended and watered and brought forth fruit. Then suddenly she refused even to look at Amy or the others. An awful change had come over her in a night, and she was beyond their reach. Prayers, embraces, Scripture reading, all the love she had received like a famished soul she now rejected, coldly, finally. There were only two possible explanations, Amy believed: She had been poisoned (mind-destroying drugs were well-known there) or she had sinned in such a way as to shut herself away from God.

Amy was like the sower in the Psalms: She went forth weeping, bearing precious seed. She prayed and she begged her friends at home to pray, pray, pray. “Oh, will you pray? Stop now and pray, lest desire turn to feeling and feeling evaporate.”

Often she ministered to the professing Christians. But, they said, the kind of Christianity she presented would cost too much. To be consistent one must not quarrel, and they loved a good fight. “We know what it means now, and it is very inconvenient, said one, and another said, “If I am to be converted I shall have to forgive her, and I can’t do that at present—so—!”

In addition to the crushing pressure of such work, she faced again the agony which she thought had been laid to rest: The D.O.M. asked her to come back to him. He quoted Paul s poignant words to Timothy, “Do thy diligence to come to me before winter,”1 and sent money for her passage. There was no doubt in his heart that his child would come. “It was agonia (I use the word with care) not to fly to him. And yet I could not. Something held me fast.” At last Wilson wrote to her, “The Master’s word was brought to me this morning early: ‘He that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me,’ ‘Bind the sacrifice with cords even unto the horns of the altar.’ No drawing back. May it be so in the strength He gives. It is well to have some gift of value to present to Him who gave His all for our redemption. Praise Him.”

“From that day on till the end,” Amy told her children, “there was no drawing back. The date of that letter was July 1899. It comforts me even now to know that after that early morning time with his Lord and Master, that beloved old man must have read very tender words, for a small Daily Light always lived beside his little old Bible which is mine now: ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you,’ and his mind would run on to the end of that promise, ‘and ye shall be comforted’ For six long years he waited in patience and then, on July 19, 1905, the last words on the page of that book were fulfilled, and his God wiped away all tears from his eyes.”

1. 2 Timothy 4:21.

Chapter 19

The Uninteresting, Unromantic Truth

Amy was relentless in her effort to describe precisely how things were, without artificial sweeteners or colors—“The God of Truth, it seems to us, does not ask for paint when the word comes to His servant. ‘Write the things thou hast seen.’” How else could people know how to pray for the work? How could they begin to fathom what heathendom meant?

Toward the close of the nineteenth century a mission society asked Amy to write of her experiences. She wrote as she had always written in her Scrap letters—the straight truth. It would not do. The committee returned the manuscript as too discouraging. Could she make it a bit more palatable? She could not. It went into a drawer. In 1900 two friends from England visited her for several months, itinerating with the Band, seeing what Amy saw. When they learned of the rejected manuscript, they asked to take it home and try to find a publisher. They succeeded, and Things as They Are appeared, enhanced by photographs taken by one of the friends. Although the writer of the preface called them “thrilling chapters,” many readers in England found them anything but thrilling. Could things be so terrible? Where were the dramatic conversion stories needed to draw crowds to missionary meetings? Years later Amy learned that a committee of Christians had met in India to ask that she be sent back to England because of the disturbance her book had created.

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.”1

In order to strengthen the credibility of the book the publishers felt it necessary to include in the second edition letters from missionaries certifying the facts.

“I am not surprised that anyone unacquainted with mission work in