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

name meant Well-Beloved. “I hated that. It was my will to teach. She gave me the Bible verse, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me.’ ” A fourteen-year-old tungachie who seemed a hopeless case and could not control the children was given a whole day alone in a sittie’s room to “listen to God.” If He would give His presence and help, she decided, she would do anything, like it or not. By the second year she had not only learned how to manage her charges well but had found that the doing of humble work for Christ’s sake transformed it into what she now calls “heavenly joy.” Shanthie, who worked as a pharmacist for forty years, found that her greatest desires had been fulfilled. “Duty was my pleasure,” she said.

Motherwork was relentless at Dohnavur as it is anywhere, and in order to oversee the work in schoolrooms, nurseries, milk kitchens, storerooms, weaving and sewing rooms, Amy whizzed from one to the other on a large tricycle. The picture must have been a startling one to a visitor who happened by—this dumpy little dynamo, careening around corners so enthusiastically that more than once she ended up in the dust. Sometimes she would collect a “set” of girls who ran after the tricycle to see a bird in the garden or to go to her room for an ad hoc prayer meeting. There were moonlight picnics, bandy rides, games when she would play bear. She was an arresting sight on horseback, trotting along the lanes, riding sidesaddle in her creamy pale saris, sometimes inviting a child up onto the horse’s back to share the fun.

Although the children’s firsthand knowledge was almost solely limited to the compound, their imaginations ranged far beyond its red brick walls. Early one morning Amy roused a houseful of girls to show them the stars for which, six months before, they had named their dolls: Andromeda, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse. When she took them to see the beginnings of a new nursery for which they had prayed, they named the stones for the mountains of Africa.

Loyal love was what Amy called the taproot of the tree that became the Dohnavur Fellowship. She never got away from the memory of that gray day by the gray sea in Shimonoseki, Japan, when a missionary spoke casually of the lack of love among missionaries. “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” “See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.” These were the watchwords. Amy resolutely refused to settle for the usual. She would believe God to see a company of His servants knit together in loyal love.

“Never about, always to,” was one of the rules. They were not to speak about another person but face to face. Trust was established on this ground.

Another rule: “It must be Come, never Go. We cannot ask another to do what we have never done or are not willing to do. That is why we ask for our fellowship only those who come ‘without a but, an if, or a limit.’” It was a steep hill they were asking the Family to climb. The leaders must climb it first.

1. Amy Carmichael, Kohila, p. vii.

Chapter 27

The Lesson of the Weaned Child

The year 1912 was a year of stripping. The power allowed to the enemy seemed at times far beyond the limits the love of God might set.

On August 13 Amy Carmichael’s spiritual mother in India, Mrs. Hopwood, died. She was the hostess at Ooty, the place of cool refreshment in the hills where Amy had spent every hot spell for fifteen years. To know that Mrs. Hopwood was there was strength and cheer to Amy. She counted on her continual prayers. She looked to her for sympathy, understanding, and godly, motherly counsel. The road was going to be steeper without that support.

On August 17 little Lulla, leader of kindergarten games and “all nursery joys,” died. She had always been delicate, so Ponnammal had kept her in her own nursery. Her breathing seemed strange one evening, then there was a sore throat and low fever. In two days she smiled such a smile as none of them had seen before, kissed Mabel Wade, her nurse, flung her arms round Amy’s neck, and was gone. “She was the sort of child who nestles into the heart and we could not help her slipping into that innermost place, which perhaps should never be given to any little child. And yet He said ‘Love . . . as I have loved you.’ We cannot love too much.”

Nor could they help wondering about the possibility of some-thing especially satanic in the “selection” of those who died and those who were left. Several retarded and other “utterly unsuitable” children rarely gave any anxiety and survived every illness. The real “temple child,” on the other hand, the child who was their reason for being, “no sooner reaches us than something almost inevitably happens, sometimes an accident, sometimes an illness. Often, so often, the newly ransomed little one is snatched away by death. It cannot be a mere chance happening. It occurs too frequently for us to think so now. But if the devil has anything to do with it, thank God—after that there is no more that he can do, and his worst only sends the little life far out of his reach forever. It is a mystery, a secret thing, and the secret things belong unto the Lord.”

Exactly a week after Lulla’s death came the master stroke. Thomas Walker, leader, strong tower of courage and comfort, father and brother to all, died of ptomaine poisoning. Mrs. Walker was in England because of illness. He was holding a mission when the sickness struck, and so was “crowned upon the battlefield.” Kind people, wanting to console, made the usual observation: “It is very hard to see how this can be for the best.”

“We are not asked to SEE,” said Amy. “Why need we when we