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

Amy could not think of leaving it alone, she quoted the hard-pressed apostle, “We glory in our weakness that the power of Christ may rest upon us.”1 The text was followed by an ellipsis, then:

Back again, and now on reading over the last few lines they seem perfectly prophetical! On Sunday I collapsed. . . . A touch of fever, then a fainting fit. . . . a terrible comedown, for I always declared nothing could make me faint. All such weakminded nonsense I quite scorned. The only time I ever lost consciousness for a moment was through the agony of sympathy experienced for Alfred [her brother] when he gashed himself and had to get sewn up But this time, over I went and before I came back all the humiliating attentions attendant upon such departures had been showered upon me and they left me very wet.

She had an explanation, albeit a feeble one. She had lost her umbrella overboard. While sun helmets were not worn by missionaries in Japan, it was taken for granted that European heads could not tolerate sunshine. Umbrellas were a must.

It was a hot day. When she got to the hotel a hot bath, as always, was waiting. It was the last straw. There had been mention in letters to her mother of divers afflictions. In January when the eight converts were given in Hirosi she wrote that she could hardly think because of acute neuralgia. In May she told her mother she might be going to China for a “change of thought,” as the climate of Japan was “dreadful upon brains and eyes.” A Keswick letter written early in June assured everyone that she was feeling fit again, having allowed herself the luxuries of butter on her bread and milk in her tea. These dainties were supposed to do what the unidentified black liquids and sea-slugs did not seem to be doing—put muscle on her. So her troubles were due to more than the loss of an umbrella.

When she came to after the fainting fit she found herself “environed by wet towels, doleful faces, and a general sense of blurs.” Then she remembered she was expected at a meeting. No “weak-minded nonsense” must interfere with that. The power of Christ, while it did not exempt her from a momentary lapse, would enable her to carry on. She banked everything on the promise of Isaiah 40:31, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength . . . they shall walk, and not faint,” took herself by the scruff of the neck, marched herself to the meeting, and spoke. It was a late meeting, followed by a long talk with a woman who came to Christ. There was no doubt in Amy’s mind it was worth it. Later she acknowledged that she had given Isaiah’s word the meaning she wanted it to have, not a good thing to do.

“Japanese head” was the doctor’s diagnosis. No one seemed to be very clear as to exactly what sort of head this was, but it was extremely painful, foreigners were susceptible to it, Amy had succumbed, and was ordered to take a long rest. This was a terrible interruption of her plans, but the threat of telltale letters to her loved ones persuaded her to submit. “I am getting meek in my old age, you see.”

Before she left she had the thrill of attending the baptism of the first believers in Hirosi. Afterwards the church group was photographed, along with Amy and her co-workers. “I wish it were possible to keep from this mode of embalmment,” she wrote, “but one can’t without hurting kind feelings and making a fuss.” For the rest of her life she resisted being photographed, giving in only rarely under pressure from people she loved. She could not understand why anyone should wish to be preserved as he is when Christians have the sublime hope of being some day like Christ.

Misaki San and Amy .

Saying good-bye was agony. The Japanese were kindness personified, and of course expected her to return within six weeks or so, but how would it look to them? Would they know she couldn’t help having to leave, or might they take her for another of the many quitters? “You are going to China for your weakness, one of them wrote. “Please come back.” Something told her that she might not be back as soon as they expected.

On board ship for Shanghai she found a note from her beloved Misaki San: “I know you will miss me, but Christ is sitting by you now, so please talk with Him to forget me.” Sleep was hard to come by in the crowded and smoke-filled hold, so she lay on her plaid on deck amid the noise and funnel dust. For the second leg of the journey she succumbed to what, on principle, she had set herself firmly against—she took first class. “I don’t believe the Lord Jesus or His disciples would go in for it. It does not seem to me honoring to our Master, this missionary habit of going by the easier rather than the harder way, when He chose the harder. It is as if we put ourselves a little above Him.” First class on such a steamer might be compared to third class on a British ship, though a bit less comfortable, and she couldn’t help being thankful for cleanliness, privacy, quiet, and, in place of the cabin boys on the coastal steamer, a woman “who wore clothes!!” Amy suffered the usual woes of storms and seasickness, heat and headaches. Nevertheless she found some sailors she could speak to of Christ. “Well, miss,” one of them said, “we thought the sea’d beat you this time.” She had asked for strength, and it came, amid the howling and clashing, roar and rush, but it gave out at the end of her talk and she had to be helped back to her cabin. She learned next day that several had trusted Him