Lily Among the Thorns

On Friday I gave my first speech! It was quite an experience that I will not soon forget... ;-) I talked about the legacy of Amy Carmichael. Studying her life was such an inspiration to me as I continue to seek the set-apart life! Here is the written form of my oration:

Amy Carmichael: A Lily Among the Thorns
"You can give without loving, but you can not love without giving." These are the words of my great heroine - Amy Carmichael. Born into a middle-class Irish family in the late 1800's, it was assumed that Amy would grow up, marry, and live the life of a homemaker. But God had a different plan for Amy, one that did not fit the common mold. Amy Carmichael was ultimately led to become a mother and caregiver to the destitute women and children of India. By reflecting on the life of this virtuous woman, I hope to encourage you to take up arms in defense of the broken and lost as she once did.

One thing that really stood out to me as I was examining her life was how God called her at a rather early age. One Sunday afternoon, 17 year old Amy was walking with her brothers when they spotted an old woman hunched over with sticks tied to her back. On an impulse of the moment they decided to help her. The woman was slower than they had anticipated and soon many of the people from their church caught up to them and looked at their service with disdain. One woman even took the hands of her children and crossed over to the other side of the road! Amy and her brothers became very embarrassed and started to pray that no one important would come along. As the stumbled along, they approached a fountain. In hopes of distracting herself, Amy started to count the stones. All of a sudden she heard a voice saying, "Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw... the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any many has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward." Amy looked around but saw no one who could have spoken to her. She soon realized that she had heard the voice of God. He had spoken to her from I Corinthians 3:12-14 and she was forever changed. After many hours of prayer about her purpose in life, Amy made the decision to follow Christ with all her heart and to hold nothing back. Rather than wait to "grow up" to start working for the Lord, Amy began almost immediately by reaching out to the factory girls (called Shawlies) and poor children in the town where she lived. Her experiences in opening and running "The Morning Watch Club" for orphans and "The Welcome" for the Shawlies proved to be of great value in the years to come. When she was 20 years old she had the opportunity to hear Hudson Taylor speak at a convention. While there she felt God calling her to the mission field, and so she applied to China Inland Mission. They ruled her health to be too fragile, causing her to eventually apply to the Church Missionary Society where she was accepted.

Initially, Amy traveled to Japan where she served for 15 months. But, after a visit to Sri Lanka, Amy felt sure that God was calling her to India and there she went, never to leave her beloved new country again. Upon arriving in the second most populous country in the world, Amy soon was exposed to the rather harsh culture of India, where the caste system and the Hindu religion governed the ways of the people. She was horrified to see young girls sold to Hindu temples as prostitutes for the priests’ "holy" pleasure, and so began her ministry as their Amma. She founded an organization which she called Dohnavur Fellowship which was really just a home open to any orphan child or woman trying to escape the forced prostitution of the Hindu temples.

One example of Amy's compassion for these people is Preena. Preena was a 7 year old girl while lived in a Hindu Temple. Her parents had given her to be used as a prostitute when she was just 5 years old to gain favor with the gods. She had tried to run away once, but she was promptly returned and was burned on her hands with red hot irons as a reminder to never run away. Two years later, while being prepared to "marry" the gods in a demonic ceremony Preena decided to run away again. A woman had tried to scare her with stories of the child-stealing Amma (the natives name for Amy) using her illustrations to explain how nice and safe the temples were, but the tales had an opposite effect on Preena! Preena escaped again and ran to the child-stealing Amma as fast as she could. Just as she had hoped, Amy and her band of Christians took her in and cared for her. Preena was just one of over a thousand children whom Dohnavur Fellowship took in during Amy's lifetime. Amy never turned anyone away and always shared the love of Christ with the lost and broken who rested in her comfortable home.

In her biography of Amy Carmichael's life, Elisabeth Elliot observed, "The preoccupations of seventeen year old girls - their looks, their clothes, their social life - do not change much from generation to generation. But in every generation there seems to be a few who make other choices. Amy was one of the few." Amy made the choice to live a life wholly devoted to Christ and separate in spirit from the world when she was just seventeen. Because of her obedience to her Heavenly Father, thousands, if not millions, of Indian women and children have felt the impact of her faith and endurance even to this day. Let us follow her example and seek after the, "the love that leads the way, the faith that nothing can dismay, the hope no disappointments tire, the passion that'll burn like fire," and become God's fuel!