A Chance to Die Elisabeth Elliot (electronic reader .txt) 📖

could do without. But the Dear Old Man? Yes, she could get along, by the grace of God, without his fatherly love. But could she break his heart? Simply walk out on the old man to whom she was light and comfort and joy? What of her mother?

“My Precious Mother,” she wrote, “Have you given your child unreservedly to the Lord for whatever He wills? . . . O may He strengthen you to say YES to Him if He asks something which costs.”

She wrote of “those dying in the dark, 50,000 of them every day,” of her own longing to tell them of Jesus, and her misgivings because of the claims of home, and of how, only a few days before, she had written down for herself the reasons for not going: her mother’s need of her, her “second father’s” need, the possibility that by staying she might facilitate others’ going, her poor health. Examining those reasons she wondered how God saw them. Were they good enough?

She could not finish the letter. It was too excruciating. Next day she tried again.

“I feel as though I had been stabbing someone I loved. . . . Through all the keen sharp pain which has come since Wednesday, the certainty that it was His voice I heard has never wavered, though all my heart has shrunk from what it means, though I seem torn in two.”

She quoted the words of Jesus, which cut deeply: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”2 He that loveth father or mother more than me is unworthy of me.”3 “To obey is better than sacrifice.”4

Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them. Amy must have spent many hours kneeling in that room, poring over her Bible, looking up to God with the questions: Who of her friends would understand? What if she should make a mistake and thus dishonor Him? Was the call mere fancy? What about leaving the D.O.M.? Might he die? But if she stayed would she not rob him of the greatest blessing? Her brothers and sisters—had she still some responsibility to help her mother with them? Health—was it foolhardy of her to imagine she could “take it” on the mission field? And money. Lord, what about money? And her widowed “Motherie.” What about her, Lord?

On January 16, in firm, clear handwriting, Mrs. Carmichael wrote, “My own Precious Child,

He who hath led will lead

All through the wilderness,

He who hath fed will surely feed. . . .

He who hath heard thy cry

Will never close His ear,

He who hath marked thy faintest sigh

Will not forget thy tear.

He loveth always, faileth never,

So rest on Him today—forever.

“Yes, dearest Amy, He has lent you to me all these years. He only knows what a strength, comfort and joy you have been to me. In sorrow He made you my staff and solace, in loneliness my more than child companion, and in gladness my bright and merry-hearted sympathizer. So, darling, when He asks you now to go away from within my reach, can I say nay? No, no, Amy, He is yours—you are His—to take you where He pleases and to use you as He pleases. I can trust you to Him and I do. . . . All day He has helped me, and my heart unfailingly says, ‘Go ye.’”

She wrote more—of the sufficient grace she could count on, of the everlasting love, of the smallness of life, of her willingness to give her child into the loving arms of God. As for Mr. Wilson, “God has his happiness in His keeping.”

Mr. Wilson wrote to comfort Mrs. Carmichael in the giving up of her “dear Child for the Lord’s work amongst the heathen. I know something of what it must cost you. . . . It hardly seems a case for anything but bowing the head in thankful acquiescence when the Lord speaks thus to one so dear. . . . The future seems changed to me. . . . She has been and is more than I can tell you to me, but not too sweet or too loving to present to Him who gave Himself for us.”

Sometimes Wilson comforted himself with the words about the colt Jesus had asked His disciples to fetch: “If any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him.”5 He needed Amy far more desperately, surely, than the man needed the colt. But it was the same Lord who asked for her. Who could say no?

1. Bishop Handley Moule, Thoughts on Christian Sanctity.

2. Matthew 16:24, 25.

3. Matthew 10:37.

4. 1 Samuel 15:22.

5. Mark 11:3.

Chapter 6

Small Shall Seem All Sacrifice

The two Wilson sons were shocked to learn of Amy’s decision. By this time they had come to terms with her lively presence in Broughton Grange. What had once been upsetting had become a part of their lives, and, though probably neither had allowed himself to admit it, they had, like Henry Higgins, “grown accustomed to her face.” Suddenly she was about to abandon them all and go off to some godforsaken place forever. Their protests were ostensibly on their father’s behalf. It was for his sake that they had tolerated her moving in with them, and certainly the old man needed her. How heartless of her to leave. It was, in effect, a breach of contract.

The Wilsons were not the only ones who were unsympathetic. Some whose names were well-known as Keswick leaders spoke “words that cut like knives.” Someone suggested that the D.O.M. would be dead before Amy was through the Mediterranean. Even Mrs. Carmichael’s sisters wondered if the girl was not enchanted by the notion of a foreign land. “If they only knew how torn in two I feel today,” Amy wrote to her mother. She was beginning to understand a little of what it might mean to “bear shame”