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

manner than ordinary children, and beautiful.”2 Amy and her comrades longed to reach over the wall, but the procuring of these children was always a hole-and-corner operation, heavily guarded, and they could only pray that He to whom no wall is an obstacle would somehow show them a way.

The bullock bandies carrying Amy and her Indian friends rumbled up to the old bungalow in Pannaivilai on the evening of March 6. That very evening in the village nearby a strange thing took place.

Preena was a child of seven who lived in the temple house. Her father was dead. Her mother had been persuaded to devote her to the gods. Once she had managed to slip out and return to her mother, a twenty-mile walk to Tuticorin, “one of the Sodoms of the province.” The temple women traced her, and the mother, threatened with the wrath of the gods, tore the child’s arms from around her neck and gave her back to them. They branded her hands with hot irons, effectively burning into her young mind the heinousness of her crime. She had run away from a sacred calling.

One day Preena overheard a conversation about “tying her to the god.” She imagined being bound with ropes to the idol in the dark recesses of the temple. Anything would be preferable to that, so she resolved to escape, no matter what the cost. Like the other little girls, she was under constant surveillance. She could think of only one way out. In desperation she went to the idol, threw herself down before it, and prayed that she might die.

On the same evening that Amy’s bandy reached the bungalow in Pannaivilai, God sent an angel to the temple house. So Amy interpreted it. If He could send an angel to the prison in Jerusalem to deliver the apostle Peter, why not to a temple house in an Indian village to deliver a little girl? Amy wrote that the angel simply took her by the hand, led her out, across a stream, through the woods. There seemed no other possible explanation for her having eluded the all-seeing eyes and finding her way to safety. Preena’s version was that she had heard the temple women call Amy “the childstealing ammal,” hoping to frighten her. The child made up her mind instead that that was the very ammal she wanted to find. The late afternoon of March 6 was the time she chose. (Was it God’s angel who chose? Or perhaps both? For God works often through human choices.) A Christian woman named Servant of Jesus came upon the “very small and desolate mite with tumbled hair and troubled eyes” standing in front of the church in Pannaivilai. It was late, so instead of taking the child back where she belonged the woman kept her for the night, intending to return her next morning. But Preena insisted that she wanted to go to the child-stealing ammal.

Early the next morning Amy was having her chota (early tea) on the verandah when Servant of Jesus, looking astonished, suddenly appeared with Preena. “She did not know about the angel, I expect, and she could not understand it: at all.” The child ran straight to the white lady, climbed into her lap, and began to chatter away. “My name is Pearl-eyes, and I want to stay here always. I have come to stay.”

Preena’s memory years later of her precious “Amma” (mother), was of her taking her into her lap and kissing her. “I thought, ‘My mother used to put me on her lap and kiss me—who is this person who kisses me like my mother?’ From that day she became my mother, body and soul.”

If it had not been late afternoon when Servant of Jesus found Preena, she would have taken her back at once to the temple house. If the Band had not arrived at the bungalow that night, there would have been no one to take her to. If Preena had succeeded in making her escape earlier, Amy would have been fifty miles away. Surely all this was a wonder of providential timing. When she told the story for the first time in Things as They Are, Amy began the chapter with David Livingstone’s words, “It seems to have been a mistake to imagine that the Divine Majesty on high was too exalted to take any notice of our mean affairs. The great minds among us are remarkable for the attention they bestow upon minutiae . . . ‘a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without your Father.’ ”

Slowly they grew to know the child and delight in her. “We watched her wonderingly. She was perfectly at home with us. She ran out, gathered leaves and flowers, and came back with them. These were carefully arranged in rows on the floor. Then another expedition, and in again with three pebbles for hearthstones, a shell for a cooking pot, bits of straw for firewood, a stick for a match, and sand for rice. She went through all the minutiae of Tamil cookery with the greatest seriousness. Then we, together with her doll, were invited to partake. The little thing walked straight into our hearts, and we felt we would risk anything to keep her.”

Preena was followed, of course. The temple women (“We are servants of the gods!”) came to the bungalow, crowds gathered, there was an enormous fuss. Preena would not go with them, and Amy would not force her. Amy dared not go near the child then lest they think she had some power to bewitch her. Arulai, one of the Band, took her away out of sight and the child clung to her and sobbed, imploring her not to let them take her. Their punishments were cruel—Preena had scars to prove it. Arulai managed to soothe her and took her back to the angry crowd. The little girl stood bravely before them all. Would she go with them? “I won’t!” was her answer, and they went off, declaring that