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

were they to do now? Who knew how to prepare a formula? How should they know what formula would suit this child or that? Amy had nowhere to turn but God. She asked for wisdom and it came. He sent another blessing that year—Mr. Walker returned, bringing with him Amy’s mother.

“An atmosphere of love and obedience pervades the compound,” Mrs. Carmichael wrote to a friend at home. “In this large family of over thirty, ranging in age from thirty-four years to a babe of nine months, I have not seen an angry look, or heard an impatient word. A set of more loving, unselfish women and girls and children could not easily be found. . . . Since we came here a month ago I can truthfully say [Amy] has scarcely had leisure even to eat. She is mother, doctor, and nurse, day and night.”

One who specially loved this Atah (baby word for grandmother) was little Indraneela, “Sapphire.” During one of the family’s feasts, the children, dressed in crimson and yellow and blue, clapped their hands and called, “Indraneela! Indraneela!” and the baby danced and clapped with them and toddled to everyone who called. She clapped her hands when she saw the flowers, clapped them again with the music.

A few weeks later an epidemic struck. Two babies died, and Indraneela, the only baby left, lay very quietly on Atah’s lap. She heard the sound of the children coming from school, and tried again to clap. Six children were ill then, and the nursing had to be divided. Amy and Arulai were with Indraneela in the early morning. “Just before dawn she called, and holding up her little hand as high as she could reach, pointed up. Then she pointed to a toy music box which we always kept beside her, and when it was given to her she turned the handle till the first notes came. She had often tried before, but never quite succeeded in turning the handle herself. Now she stopped and looked up with those joyous eyes, so unlike a baby’s eyes in steadfastness of expression: ‘Let me to my heaven go! A little harp me waits thereby . . . .’

“She held out her little hands to be kissed, and then, tired, fell asleep. In the few hours that followed we could not help noticing the other-world expression deepening in the baby’s eyes. . . . Then there was a sudden breaking of the silence, one little cry, the baby’s mother-word, ‘Amma!’ ”

An angel came for her, Amy said—gently touched her so that she slept and woke to the music of heaven. Amy took the children to the garden and showed them nasturtiums and convolvulus which were not flourishing as they should have. But one beautiful lily, the first that had ever blossomed there, had opened that very morning.

“If Jesus came to our garden,” she asked, “which flower would you give Him?”

They ran to the lily. “We would give Him this!’

Would she give Him her lily? Indraneela, Amy was sure, was the child of an ancient, royal race. There was something noble about her, something dainty and imperious in her ways. We would give Him this! We would give Him this!—the words kept repeating themselves to her mind. Would she, could she give Him this? As she was resting in her room later that afternoon, trying to gather strength for the baby’s burial, she heard Mr. Walker’s schoolboys reading aloud from the book of Exodus the description of the breastplate of the high priest, which had four rows of stones. In the second row was a sapphire. It was the word she needed. Her Sapphire was “set on His breast.” The child would be safe there.

Dear little feet, so eager to be walking

But never walked in any grieving way,

Dear little mouth, so eager to be talking

But never hurt with words it cannot say,

Dear little hands, outstretched in eager welcome,

Dear little head that close against me lay—

Father, to Thee I give my Indraneela,

Thou wilt take care of her until That Day.

Three months later a telegram told Amy that her Dear Old Man had died June 19. Two months after that she wrote, “It has not got to the place where I can talk about it yet.”

1. Gold Cord’ p. 29.

2. Amy Carmichael, The Continuation of a Story, p. 7.

3. Gold Cord, p. 31.

4. Katherine Mayo, Mother India (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), p. 48.

5. Amy Carmichael, Toward Jerusalem.

6. Amy Carmichael, If (London: Society for the Promotion cf Christian Knowledge), p. 43.

Chapter 23

The Impress of the Signet Ring

Dates had particular significance for Amy Carmichael—time was a creature of God, to be noted and served with prayer and care. Like the Israelites who, at the command of God, set up piles of stones to remind them of places where God had met them in a particular way, Amy established certain days to remind the Family of His providences. Because Preena arrived on the sixth of March (1901), and Indraneela died on the sixth of January (1905), a day of prayer was instituted on the sixth day of every month to intercede for children in danger. It is still kept. The Family gathers and kneels, one of the members reads out the names of villages, and the whole group responds, “Lord, save the children there.” Amy made a Praise Box into which slips of paper giving reasons for thanksgiving were dropped. This was opened on the Day of Prayer and the Family gave thanks together.

The Indian workers were steadily deepened in their love for the children and consecration to work which was “not naturally easy to the flesh, especially Indian flesh.” The nursery emptied by the epidemic was filled again, “but these tiny things’ hold on life is very light, and I fear to say much about them.” Even Mrs. Carmichael, who had reared seven babies, was at a loss to know what to do for some of the pitiful little scraps that came to them. She knew how to sew and embroider, however, and