
Amy Carmichael, born in the little coastal village of Millisle, Co. Down in Northern Ireland, served as a missionary in India for 55 years without furlough. Trusting the Lord to save her at a young age, Amy was to live a long and fruitful in her Master’s service. In the early days she worked amongst the poor of the part of Belfast which the family had moved to, starting a fellowship in the “The Tin Tabernacle.” Today that fellowship remains and is known as the “Welcome Evangelical Church.” Amy’s own family (she was the eldest of 7 children) knew days of hardship, illness and poverty but through it all Amy felt led of the Lord to work in Japan, Ceylon and eventually southern India where she worked amongst Indian women who had been persecuted for leaving their original Hindu faith. After meeting Preena, a little girl who had been offered to a Hindu temple, Amy discovered the horrifying practice of temple prostitution and started to rescue children who had been trafficked for this purpose. The growing place of refuge which she started was known as “Dohnavur.”
With other Indian women, Amy founded a huge hostel as well as a children’s hospital and in time her immense work led to the law being changed in India to protect children from this awful abuse. Of course, in the process of this she faced terrible persecution and much hardship but her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who had saved her as a child carried her through, for the Lord protected her and saw her financial needs for medication met.
However, an accident in later life meant that Amy was left incapacitated for the last 20 years of her life. Confined to bed as an invalid, these years produced much of spiritual worth – and another great legacy was left in the form of around 37 books and much poetry, which live on to touch hearts to this day.
Only days ago I was delighted to discover a little book in a second hand book sale, published by Amy in 1941: “His Thoughts Said…. His Father Said….” These short little thoughts show the private thoughts of man – and the accompanying words of wisdom. The following was written under “Reflect Me….”
“The son was grieved because some whom he had hoped to help would not even look at his Lord. They were trying to satisfy themselves with husks. They were playing with phantoms. As he thought sorrowfully of those dear to him, who were so near and yet so far, he remembered how they and he together had looked at the reflection of a mountain in still water. It was the reflection that first caught their attention. But presently they raised their eyes to the mountain. “Reflect Me,” said his Father to him then. They will look at thee. Then they will look up, and see Me. And the stiller the water the more perfect the reflection.”
Amy once said: “Nothing is too precious for Jesus.”
On this stormy rainy night I think of the Carmichael family home on the Ards Peninsula, where Amy was born all those years ago. Despite frequent illness in her own life, Amy lived on to leave a legacy which would leave its mark on a nation of people and today Amy’s body lies in India where she served her Master until He called her Home at the age of 83.
This single lady who often suffered in life, also once said… “When I consider the cross of Christ, how can anything that I do be called sacrifice?” As His servants, we have a work to do in the society (or even in the tiny sphere) in which we live; such work may or may not be instrumental in changing evil customs… but oh that we would be used of the Lord to reach the lost and to leave a legacy of love and goodness for time and eternity, for He has said: “Reflect me.”
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…” (Philippians 2v5)