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

of the pictures in Dohnavur books was Tiruvanna Malai, which she called “The Holy Washerman,” mistakenly reading the Tamil word for washerman into a word which meant “holy elder brother.” Indians were too polite to call attention to her error, and foreigners adopted the name in ignorance, as they did the Village of Uncrowned King, which was actually the Village of Crowned King.

Kalakadu was a town a few miles from Dohnavur whose name meant scrub-land—not very auspicious, but, in Amy’s view, spiritually descriptive. “No faintest willingness was ever shown by anyone in that town to listen to the Gospel.” It seemed an impregnable town, therefore one for which they prayed mightily and hoped tenaciously. God willing, it would not remain a spiritual scrub-land. Amy gave it what she hoped was a prophetic name, Joyous City, with no idea of the irony that name would one day hold for her.

In 1926 she had gone to Kalakadu with a small group from Dohnavur to preach outside the huge temple fastnesses. Finding a drama company about to make a presentation nearby, Amy forthwith went to the manager and, to the amazement of her companions, made her first stage appearance. It was an opportunity not to be missed of telling the strange story the crowd had never heard before—of Jesus and His love. A week later back they went and this time found lurid magenta handbills being distributed to the crowds:

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

From 9.00 to 9.30 this evening the respected Carunia Ammal and the respected Mr. Proctor of Dohnavur will lecture on the Great War in Mesopotamia and on the story of Raj the Brigand. Because of this definite feature tickets will be on sale. . . .

So Ronald and Amma stood in the blazing lights and told the announced stories, bringing them round to another Great War, the war they were fighting, and what it meant. While the actors were making up backstage, the manager did his best to persuade them to remain for the show. The answer was no, thank you.

Apparently there was no indication in Joyous City of “ears to hear,” nor would anyone think of renting a house to these Christians. But after five years there was a slight break. A house that had stood empty for three years was offered to them for rent. It was haunted. They were warned of the danger—something would happen, a curse would fall. They took the house for the dispensary two Dohnavur women wished to open.

Amy, to whom the special dates of her life were always fraught with deep significance, had no inkling on the morning of October 24, 1931, that this date would be another life-changer. She was visiting the Dohnavur dispensary in Song of the Plough that morning, and praying for guidance about money. For a long time she was silent. Then she prayed this: “Do anything, Lord, that will fit me to serve Thee and to help my beloveds.”

That afternoon she was driven to the “haunted” house in Joyous City to make sure that all was as she wanted it to be for the women who were to live there. At first the key could not be found, so it was twilight before they were able to open the door. Amy went to the newly built palm-leaf shed which was to serve as “The Place.” The coolies had dug the bore hole just inside the door instead of at the back where it belonged. In the darkness she fell across the opening of the narrow pit, broke her leg, dislocated an ankle, and twisted her spine.

Hadn’t she been warned? The curse of Allah was on any who would challenge Islam.

She was in much pain. The car went back the four miles to Dohnavur to bring May and two others in a lorry to act as ambulance. May put a splint on the kaal and, making her as comfortable as they could, they took her to the hospital at Neyoor. One of the women described it as a “cyclonic” night, wild and stormy, pelting with rain. They could not rule out: the possibility of demonic interference. Who knew what powers might have been released by that curse? Yet their confidence in the One who sets limits to those powers remained unaltered.

The lorry jerked and bumped its way for forty-six excruciating miles over gullies and washouts. A nurse named Mary Mills who was with Amma said she wished she could take the pain from her. “I knew that she meant to bear it herself instead of me. Then I heard myself answer, Your joy no man taketh from you. . . . a certain heavenly word given to me for whoever should want to do that loving thing.”1

The morphine May had administered was wearing off before they reached Neyoor, where they turned Amma over to her friend of many years, Dr. Howard Somervell.

1. Amy Carmichael, Rose From Brier, p. 18.

Chapter 41

The Toad Beneath the Harrow

When Amy Carmichael was brought home from the hospital, no one foresaw that for the rest of her life her world would be the room in the main bungalow which had been her bedroom, sitting room, and study. Called the Room of Peace, it became for her what the apostle Paul’s prison cell was for him. Her chains were of a different kind than his, but she saw herself, like him, “a prisoner of the Lord,” having paid a price for the beginnings of a witness in a closed town.

In the Dohnavur letter, which by then had become Dust of Gold, Amy described the room:

It was not built to be a personal room at all, but a general home-room, with a wide verandah so that many girls could sleep here with me. A teakwood partition divides the room in two, a great convenience in long illness, and as you come in through the blue curtains near the door you see on the right hand teakwood panelling and on the left the bookcases to which the household come when they want