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

can, He will; but He understands, and I do, those fierce aches for J. I am quite sure that He has you both in His most tender hands, so I am not anxious.”

It would be unfair to attribute Amy Carmichael’s attitude toward sex and marriage to mere Victorianism or mere ignorance. That she was a Victorian is not open to question. Proof of the degree of her ignorance does not exist. It is clear that she took the “road less traveled by”—in this matter as in many others. And “that has made all the difference.”

People sometimes insisted that Englishmen might remain single but Indians could not. This Amy vehemently denied. Paul, she pointed out, was not a Western man. On his authority she defended her reasoning:

In our spiritual position towards our Lord and in His enabling power towards us, there is no difference (between East and West). See Galatians 3:28. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

So it follows that if for Christ’s sake and for the sake of souls for whom He died any one of us, man or woman, gives up what he or she would naturally desire, a home of our own, the resources of His power flow equally to each. To say there is a difference is to say His inspired word is not true, and that is a serious position to take.

This comes close home to us here. We know that unless many Carunias (the family surname given to all Dohnavur girls) are free to give themselves to the work of caring for the children, those children must go to destruction. This means that it is impossible to find wives from the best of the Carunias, for all Anandas (the Dohnavur Indian men). So we believe that to some Anandas love enough will be given to do without that which they would naturally desire. . . .

But is not such a life contrary to nature? Yes it is. But look at the plane. It is contrary to nature for tons of metal to rise above the earth and soar like a bird. What makes it possible? The presence of a Power within which enables it to fly “by its speed and pressure against the air.” So with us. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”2

Once, in an hour of need, these words helped me:

Across the will of nature

Leads on the path of God;

Not where the flesh delighteth

The feet of Jesus trod.

Do I regret now that for your sake I chose to do without that which nature desires, what was pressed upon me, so that I might serve “without distraction” as Paul puts it? No, indeed I do not. “You will never regret it,” an old missionary said to our Sisters of the Common Life. And to those who by God’s grace are, and to those who will be Brothers of the Common Life I say the same. You will go through hard days, but you will never regret it. You will never regret it.

1. Exodus 28:32.

2. Philippians 2:13.

Chapter 39

No Milk Biscuits

Bring to India a strong sense of humor and no sense of smell” was Amy’s advice to an accepted candidate, along with warnings of the temptations shipboard offered. She had known many prospective missionaries who were “wrecked on the first voyage and arrived quite useless so far as the kind of thing I look for is concerned.” She usually sent instructions for spending the time—exercise (“the time-honored way of walking hard”), prayer, witnessing, reading. She included passages of Scripture, especially the first three chapters of Ephesians, and book lists, but “keep off novels, even good ones.”

The apostle Paul described himself as “the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things.” The latter was a phrase Amy liked. “We want the offscouring sort.” It fit her idea of the scrap-heap that was Dohnavur. But she made it clear that she did not mean just any sort of offscouring or scrap. “We must have gentlefolk for reasons you will understand later. We want educated, thoughtful minds . . . refinement, character, an inborn loyalty.”

What she did not want was biscuits. “I don’t pray for milk biscuits for the DF, all cut to a pattern and stamped with a single decorous pretty stamp. So many places, to judge by the results, seem to be great biscuit manufacturers and they turn out tidy boxes of biscuits. I pray for soldiers, not biscuits!”

A new arrival might at first see only flowers and babies and bright faces, “and you will feel, I hope, a general sweetness and happiness. . . . Under the sweetness there is a real Cross.”

We follow a stripped and crucified Savior. Those words go very deep. They touch everything—motives, purposes, decisions, everything. Let them be with you as you prepare your spirit for the new life.

Dear, you are coming to a battlefield. You cannot spend too much time with Him alone. The keys of the powers of the world to come are not turned by careless fingers. So few are willing to pay the price of the knowledge of God. They play through life, even Christian life, even missionary life.

Here I have stopped. Am I asking far too much? Does it sound too stern, too earnest? I want to be sure you understand. The last group came out rather quickly, and I had not time to make all this plain.

I need not say anything about what people call “the other side”—the side of life that is full of joy and fun. We have any amount of that and I don’t call it the other side at all. It’s just part of the whole.

When a young woman doctor arrived in Dohnavur for the first time, she was taken to the bungalow to meet Amma in her room. “There was a lightness, brightness, and joy about her. She was loving, lovely,