1. It may not be possible to shelter future generations as we have sheltered past ones. I feel we must therefore try to prepare them to test things that differ and to weigh up other points of view, so that if the day should come when they have conflicting ideals forced upon them from without they may be able to make a considered judgment.
2. Our senior accals had nearly all some experience of life outside the compound even if only as a child. The generation from whom the senior accals of the future must come have not that experience; yet not only may they have to fill the place held by the seniors of today but circumstances may arise in which they will have to shoulder responsibilities to carry which a knowledge of the world has been essential to sitties.
Then followed an explanation of the specific ways in which Girl Guides could provide just the help that was needed. The proposal was rejected, “but I did not feel I was not listened to,” she said. Years later she broached the subject again. This time it received Amma’s blessing and a Guide company was formed.
The interests of Amy Carmichael might understandably have been restricted by this time in her life to the Family. Weren’t the burdens she bore for them quite an adequate load for an elderly shut-in who had a large share of pain to bear besides? In fact her attention and concern continued to range outside the compound walls where there were still huge numbers who did not know Christ. All new DFs were required to live for a time in a Hindu village with non-English-speaking companions in order to learn the language by the saturation method, and the religion and customs at first hand. She wanted news of them and their progress. When evangelistic teams of twos and threes returned from visits to the villages, Amma wanted to know exactly what questions they had been asked, how they had answered. What of the Tamil tracts and booklets produced and distributed in the DF book room—were they being read? Sometimes, until she became too ill, she asked to meet patients who had come to trust the Lord in the hospital.
Evangelistic efforts in Dohnavur suffered from too exclusive use of the Family’s men as preachers. Yearly at Christmas a four-day convention called the Meetings of Vision brought together Hindus, Muslims, and others to hear again the Gospel which many had first heard through the personal witness of the hospital staff, or through visits to the villages by Dohnavur people. In 1948, at the suggestion of Dr. Kinnear, an outside Indian speaker (a “trusted” one) was invited to address these meetings. It was the thin edge of a most significant wedge, bringing to Dohnavur in due course many leaders of a new evangelical awakening in Tamil Nadu.
The Dohnavur “river” was certainly flowing in new “channels.” It was a testimony to the vigor of Amy’s mind that she was able to accept as many of the new proposals as she did. It was also greatly reassuring to those in charge. The question she had forbidden them to ask—Would Amma have done it this way?—was always there, spoken or unspoken. To have her blessing on the new channels obviated the question.
Chapter 50
Fettered and Yet Free
Three rules of prayer helped the Family to save time and energy in prayer meetings. It was Amma, of course, who wrote them.
1. We don’t need to explain to our Father things that are known to Him.
2. We don’t need to press Him, as if we had to deal with an unwilling God.
3. We don’t need to suggest to Him what to do, for He Himself knows what to do.
Whether her children kept those rules as they prayed for her healing, we don’t know. Surely they pressed the Lord often for the healing of their dear Amma. Surely they made many suggestions.
Amy Carmichael wrote a private note on June 12, 1948, “Not relief from pain, not relief from the weariness that follows, not anything of that sort at all, is my chief need. Thou, O Lord my God, art my need—Thy courage, Thy patience, Thy fortitude. And very much I need a quickened gratitude for the countless helps given every day.”
Ten days later she was feeling pressed because of tiring interviews which came “before I had ‘obtained access.’ See 1 Kings 8:56: ‘There hath not failed one word of all His good promise.’ If we take time to let this soak in, there is rest in the midst of pressure.”
The next day, June 23, was not different from other days, to begin with—the early morning cup of tea, the usual quiet time of reading and prayer, perhaps pills for the usual pain, and then the usual people to see. Someone brought word of another who was going through deep water. She wrote a note and made up a parcel to send to her. There was no one at hand to deliver them except the nurse. She sent her off, and then made her way to the bathroom. She slipped and fell. Neela was by her side almost at once. “Don’t tell anyone,” said Amma, “I shall be all right in the morning.”
Neela promptly disobeyed, called the two doctors, Christian Rogan and Nancy Robbins, who came running. They found a broken right arm and a fractured femur. The shock to an over-eighty frame was nearly lethal, and without a blood transfusion and an injection she might quickly have passed through the Gates. She hovered very near for two days and then rallied. So, she noted wryly, those doctors had “slammed the Gates again.”
Most of the responsibility for the men’s side of the work had devolved on Godfrey Webb-Peploe since Murray’s leaving. He had also the spiritual legacy left by Walker of work in the village of Dohnavur, not to mention “all that Shepherd-work means for the Family.” Before Amma’s accident in June he had been given doctor’s orders to rest. A serious infection had set in after someone had kicked him in one of the boys’ games, and the leg had not healed. Just before Christmas of 1948 he had a thrombosis.
Amy herself, though almost totally immobile since her fall, had snapped back sufficiently to be “deep in everything, and power to think has come again.” She felt it was time for more “‘thinks,’ together with one and another of this dear family”—about their allowing her to drop out altogether of the place of leadership, and implementing what had been decided seventeen years earlier: May and Godfrey were to be the leaders. Their appointment by Amma had been perfectly clear to the Family but they had stubbornly (or was it helplessly?) refused to acknowledge her abdication. Up till now all I could say has been, as the Tamils put it, moonlight upon rock.” What she wanted without further delay was validation by the formal election of May and Godfrey in the annual Kingdom Business” meeting.
One evening seven weeks later Mary Mills came into the Room of Peace. Besides being the “Perfect Nurse” who had cared for Amy ever since her accident, she was one of the closest of her companions. Amy read in her face that something had happened.
“What is it?” she asked. “What is wrong?”
“There is nothing wrong,” said Mary. “God has trusted us with a great trust. Godfrey is in heaven.”
Godfrey, the beloved. Godfrey, her son. First it was Ponnammal, then Arulai, then Murray. One by one they had been given to her. One by one they had demonstrated the spiritual calibre she had asked God for, the character so desperately needed in a leader for her Family. And one by one they had been removed. Now Godfrey, the tower of strength she needed so much more in her old age, the one for whom she had so often thanked God. Godfrey. In heaven. We wonder what “her thoughts said” when she heard the stunning news. We wonder what “her Father said.” What dialogue took place between those two during the rest of that night? It is not recorded. We guess that she said YES. We know that she wrote to the Family next day:
“Our God trusts us to trust Him. . . . Let us not disappoint God. Let us rise to this great trust.”
She reminded them of the great promise of Romans 8:28, and of Jesus’ having wept—proof that “tears are not sin. But to go on lamenting would be sin. It would be as though we doubted the love of our most tender Father. To wonder why this has been allowed to happen would be to dishonor Him. I found myself doing this very thing. ‘Oh, why am I left—I who am useless to you all—and he, who could do so much for you, taken?’ Suddenly I knew that even to think such a thought for a moment, was sin. Thank God for the cleansing Blood. But do n
ot let us grieve His love by wondering why. Faith never wonders why.”
Each of these deaths was a death far harder for Amy to bear than her own physical suffering. But she saw in each of them a chance to die, the opportunity to acknowledge once again the lordship of Christ in her life. He held all the rights. She had turned them over long ago to Him when she resolved to follow Him to the uttermost. The searing questions which crowded her mind she knew that she must refuse. It was one more way of saying no to herself and yes to God.
There was one question she could not possibly refuse. Who would pick up the reins? John Risk had the qualities of leadership she looked for, but was comparatively young and lacked Godfrey’s experience. The Lord was aware of all that. John must be God’s man. Who was to tell him so if not Amy? Who else was in a position to appoint him?
She wrote to him almost at once to say she expected him to take over. She was, willy-nilly, still the leader, still a prophet after the order of Judas and Silas who ‘‘exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them.”1
“As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee”2 was the verse she gave to her “David.”
Early in 1950 it was decided that it was time to invite Indians to join the leadership group which for twenty years had comprised only May Powell and the Webb-Peploes. There were two who had had all the training the DF could give—Mimosa’s oldest son Rajappan and Ponnammal’s daughter Purripu. They became associates, Rajappan working with John on the men’s side, Purripu with May on the women’s. Amy came to a settled peace that this now was the Pattern shewn.
Her phenomenal strength drained rapidly away after the fall in the bathroom. There was no more walking out under the trees or even across the room for Amma. She could not sit, let alone walk, stand, or kneel. She learned a new appreciation for each of these positions, which it had been her habit to use as helps to prayer. She was reduced to the one least conducive to prayer, the one she had never chosen—lying on her back. Throughout her life she had taken to her Lord every least thing, pleasant or unpleasant, in order to live the whole of life in Christ, discovering in each experience how He shared it with her. It was entirely natural that she should mention to Him this matter of being pinned flat. Could there possibly be a spiritual lesson there? Would it be something whereby to help somebody else? In answer, she “seemed to see Him, as He was for a few immeasurable minutes, not upright but laid flat on His Cross.
“I tell you this because some of you may find yourselves in hard ways. Always your Lord has been before you. Always He will come with a most heavenly understanding of what your heart most needs.”
Or doth another gird thee, carry thee
Whither thou wouldest not, and doth a cord
Bind hand and foot, and flying thought and word?
An enemy hath done it, even so,
(Though why that power was his thou dost not know)
O happy captive, fettered and yet free,
Believe, believe to see
Jesus Himself draw near and walk with thee.3
If it was hard to pray while supine, it was at least as hard to write. But she kept at it, lying with the paper tilted against a blotter, conscientiously finishing This One Thing and courageously turning out her letters and tiny notes as long as her hand would do her bidding.
When severe neuralgia in the right shoulder and hand made her fingers almost immovable, her New Zealand nurse tried to encourage her to exercise to keep them from stiffening completely. One day she said, “Alison, I have been trying all day to join thumb and forefinger and I cannot. Do you think that I will be able to move them again?” Alison told her that probably she would not. She lay quietly for a time, then said, “I gave that hand to the Lord for Him to use”—she remembered the exact year—“and now He has taken it again.” Further silence. Then she quoted the words of Jesus, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”4 She knew she would not write again. It was dictation after that.
Alison became ill and had to go back to New Zealand for further treatment. Before she left she was able to go and see Amma in her room. Each knew it would be the last time.
“Alison, we won’t meet again in this world. When you hear I have gone, jump for joy!”
1. Acts 15:32.
2. Joshua 1:5.
3. Toward Jerusalem, p. 86.
4. Matthew 20:15.
Chapter 51
One Thing Have I Desired
On the wall of my study hangs a thin brass Celtic cross with the ancient inscription, IHS, for In hoc signe vinces (“In this sign conquer”). It used to lie on the table next to Amma’s bed where she could finger it in the night and put her mind on those brave words. She would, by grace, by her Lord’s cross and passion, keep on conquering, keep on climbing, keep on being God’s “athlete” in her bed. She asked one of the men to cut a large cross out of black poster paper to be hung where she could see it in the dimmest light, to be for her a reminder “of pain far greater than mine.”
Another comfort in the painful nights was the text which Nancy had given her to allay her fears about becomimg a burden. From Revelation 2:9, 10, the words I KNOW . . . FEAR NOT. . . were inscribed on a piece of teak and hung with a light over them.
Amy’s friend Bishop Pakenham Walsh sent her the words of the hymn “In Heavenly Love Abiding,” by A. L. Waring. She kept them also by her bed, especially comforted by the last stanza:
Green pastures are before me
Which yet I have not seen,
Bright skies will soon be o’er me
Where the dark clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure,
My path to life is free,
My Savior has my treasure,
And He will walk with me.
In one of her last dictated letters she included these words, and added, “I am very happy and content. Green pastures are before me, and my Savior has my treasure—the DF.”
Mary Mills reported in December 1950, “Our Amma is going through a very difficult bit of the way. She is definitely losing ground on this side, and the longing grows ever more for the day of Deliverance/’
Poor Jeevanie, so often irritated with Amma in years gone by, but loving her now through the experience of ministering to her helplessness, had a new worry in the last two weeks. Amma had made her promise that she would see to it that no one put her in a coffin. No one had ever put anybody in a coffin in Dohnavur. It was always the simple pallet and the blanket of flowers. But Amma, not without reason, feared it might occur to somebody to do something special for her. She wanted none of it. So Jeevanie promised.
“But it rained for two weeks,” she told me. “I could not help thinking. All that water—in God’s garden—shouldn’t we—?”
As the year 1950 gave way to 1951 the weather was stiflingly hot, a sore trial to Amy even in healthy times. Now it was almost more than the wracked body could bear. She stopped eating. The old cystitis recurred. Her circulation, in the doctor’s words, “packed up.” She whose eyes, both spiritual and physical, had been keen and quick and penetrating to see far more than most, lay without seeming to notice anything very much.
During the second week of January, 1951, Amy began to sleep a great deal. Then she fell into a coma, and it was then that some of her children saw her for the first time. She had been unable for a long time to have the large groups to her room as she used to, so there were people in the Family, which numbered nearly nine hundred, who had never seen her face. Now they could do so without disturbing her. They came quietly and were allowed to stand by her bed and look. The birds in the verandah cage, it is avowed, were silent then.
She loved Bunyan’s story of the two pilgrims’ welcome at the Gate of the City:
Now, while they were thus drawing towards the Gates, behold a company of the Heavenly Host came out to meet them; to whom it was said, by the other two Shining Ones. These are the men that have loved our Lord, when they were in the world, and that have forsaken all for his holy name;
and he hath sent us to fetch them, and we have brought them thus far on their desired journey, that they may go in and look their Redeemer in the face with joy. Then the Heavenly Host gave a great shout, saying, ‘Blessed are they that are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb’. . . .
Now I saw in my dream that these two men went in at the Gate; and lo! as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There were also that met them with harps and crowns and gave them to them; the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honor. Then I heard in my dream that all the bells in the City rang again for joy; and that it was said unto them, ENTER YE INTO THE JOY OF YOUR LORD.
The children and their accals, the annachies and the sitties, the friends from the village who came to the Room of Peace could not help hoping for some last word, some glimpse of what the seemingly sightless eyes might be seeing. But Amy’s prayer had been that there would be no rending good-byes. She believed the Lord had promised, in 1938, that He would take her while she slept.
She had written of those who died as having been “carried by angels.”1 “It is all we know of how they go.”
So she went. By early morning of January 18, 1951 the appointed Shining Ones must have been dispatched to carry her on her so greatly desired journey. Others, we may believe, were waiting with the raiment, the harps, the crowns in their hands. Some were poised to begin the pealing of the bells.
From little Dohnavur she who had loved her Lord and very truly had forsaken all for His holy name was called, and the bells in the House of Prayer played the music she had asked for, that to which her own words had been set:
One thing have I desired, my God, of Thee,
That will I seek, Thine house be home to me.
A Chance to Die Page 34