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“We read biographies to get out of ourselves and into
another’s skin, to understand the convulsive drama that
shapes, motivates, and issues from that other life.”
Elizabeth Elliot
Sherwood Eddy, a missionary and statesman, used the term “radiant life” to describe the life of Amy Carmichael. He said, “Amy Wilson Carmichael was the most Christlike character I ever met . . . her life was the most fragrant, the most joyfully sacrificial, that I ever knew.”
Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867-1951) was born and raised in Northern Ireland. Living for the good of others was a notion she picked up from her Presbyterian parents. That she was the oldest of seven children only reinforced that notion. From her governess, she learned about poetry and heard stories of the great martyrs of Scotland and England. Those stories gave her big ideas about courage.
As a teen, Amy was known for having a sensitive nature. After her father died, her family moved to Belfast and she threw herself into serving others. The director of the Belfast City Mission took her through city streets to see the “other half.” She gathered children from her neighborhood for meetings. She taught boys in a night school and initiated a weekly prayer meeting for girls. She also worked with the YWCA.
The Keswick Convention (a Bible conference) sparked her spiritual sturrings and soon the call of God to missionary service fell on her ears of faith. “Go ye!’ is how she sums up that call at the age of 24. In 1893, she went to Japan, supported by the Keswick Missions Committee. Her experiences there were more difficult than expected. The language was tough and there was disharmony among her fellow missionaries. She wrote to her mother, “The devil is awfully busy.”
She set out for Ceylon but soon ended up in India (1895) where she remained without furlough for 55 years. She moved to Southern India in Dohnavur where she learned about a “hidden secret” in Indian life. The practice of “dedicating” children to Hindu temples had a dark underside. Many did this
out of family custom, but in some cases, children were basically sold out as “temple prostitutes;” married to the gods, so to speak. These were made available to Hindu men who visited the temples. A by-product of this clandestine practice was a number of babies in desperate need of being rescued from this cycle of sin.
Amy began a work devoted to saving “temple children” from lives of degradation. She found it difficult to find women who would nurse out-of-caste babies. One women who consented to breast-feed one of Amy’s children was killed by her husband for her sin against caste. But eventually, with the help of some local (converted) women, she made the slow and careful steps necessary to create a haven for helpless babies. By 1901, the
Dohnavur Fellowship, a society for rescuing ill-treated children, was underway.
Amy’s reports for supporters back home contained the straight unromantic truth. Her missionary society preferred rosey reports from the field, but she told it as it was. One time, the society rejected one of her reports as too discouraging and asked for a rewrite. She refused. For her, mission work offered little in the way of glamour. It offered a chance to die.
Speaking of dying, “Calvary Love” was what Amy Carmichael lived with and for. She was willing to face any risk for the children. She was frequently charged with criminal kidnapping and often threatened with violence. Still, twelve years after beginning this controversial ministry, there were 130
rescued children (her little “Lotus Buds”) under her care. She was mother, doctor, and nurse; day and night. Eventually, many more hundreds were rescued by the Dohnavur Fellowship. Amy became known as “Amma” (‘mother’ in the Tamil tongue).
On one occasion, her grief over the death of a beloved child inspired Amy to write: “There is only one way of victory over the bitterness and
rage that naturally come to us -- To will what God wills brings peace.”
The children were physically cared for, fed and educated, with special focus on their “Christian character.” One of the girls Amy raised described her childhood this way: “When we were very small, we were on the wings of her love.” But she was strict too. Love, for Amy, meant, self-sacrifice,
self-discipline and courage. When punishments were needed, Amy did it herself but it would often come with assurances of love, and often a piece of candy afterwards (or a Bible reading).
Amy craved for more time to focus on spiritual concerns but the physical needs were quite pressing. When criticized for not being “evangelistic enough,” her response was; “Souls are more or less securely attached to bodies . . . and as you cannot get the souls out and deal with them
separately, you have to take them both together.” “Calvary Love” often calls for concrete service in practical matters.
Amy’s struggle as a single woman found some resolution in her belief that those who trust in God will not be left desolate. She carried that promise in her heart. She formed the “Sisters of the Common Life,” an order for single Christian women committed wholly to the children. This gave them a sense of family and kept them focused. Amy only hired workers who shared her “single eye” for God’s glory.
After a fall left her partially invalid, she spent the last twenty years of her life writing and pleading the cause of her children. She prayed that her “thorn in the flesh” be removed and met with the same answer that Paul received; “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in
your weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). She died in 1951 at the age of 83.
Amy’s story cannot be told without some examples of her poetry:
A Prayer for Deliverance:
"From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings . . .
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay . . .
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.”
A Prayer for God's Will:
“And shall I pray Thee change Thy will, my Father,
Until it be according unto mine?
But, no. Lord, no, that never shall be, rather
I pray Thee blend my human will with Thine.
I pray Thee hush the hurrying, eager longing,
I pray Thee soothe the pangs of keen desire--
See in my quiet places, wishes thronging--
Forbid them, Lord, purge, though it be with fire.”
A Prayer for Her Children:
(From “Toward Jerusalem.” p. 106)
"Father hear us, we are praying,
Hear the words our hearts are saying,
We are praying for our children.
Keep them from the powers of evil,
From the secret, hidden peril,
From the whirlpool that would suck them,
From the treacherous quicksand pluck them.
From the worldling’s hollow gladness,
From the sting of faithless sadness,
Holy Father, save our children.
Through life’s troubled waters steer them,
Through life’s bitter battle steer them,
Father, Father, be Thou near them.
Read the language of our longing,
Read the wordless pleading thronging,
Holy Father, for our children
And wherever they may bide,
Lead them Home at eventide."
Joel Mark Solliday, M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Brooklyn Center Church of Christ in Minnesota. A Pepperdine graduate, he later worked in their Campus Life Office and at ACU as a Missionary in Residence. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary.
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