Amy Wilson Carmichael was born in 1867 into a strong Presbyterian home in Northern Ireland. Amy’s childhood was filled with wonder as she rode her pony along the shores of the Irish Sea. She loved to study the sea creatures in the tide pools on bright summer days. The family was rather well-to-do and devoted to the Lord. Amy and her Mother often brought food to the needy in the town of Millisle where they lived and the family regularly attended church. Amy was the oldest of seven children and from early on, she loved to take care of and entertain her younger siblings. In 1880, Amy opened her heart to Jesus Christ on a deeper level while away at boarding school in England. In 1884, the family fell into financial difficulties and Amy had to return home to Ireland.
The family moved and Amy’s new-found faith had begun to stir within her as she noticed the poor on the streets of Belfast. She was moved when God brought Scripture to mind as she began to evaluate her desire to help others less fortunate than herself. Soon, Amy invited neighborhood children to the family home on Sunday afternoons. They played games, and had story time and Bible lessons. The children responded enthusiastically, but were from privileged families. What of the poor children Amy noticed on the streets, didn’t they deserve to hear the gospel?
Amy volunteered to visit the slums with the Belfast City Mission and turned her attention to the poor children of the streets. She would approach the children and ask them to come with her to have fun at the mission. The children’s response was great and this led to many opportunities for influencing the lives of others for Christ. There were many mills in the city of Belfast which employed young women. These were the working poor who also lived in the slums. Called “Shawlies” because they wore shawls, using them to cover their heads since hats cost more than they could afford, these same girls were often abused. Who cared for them? Amy knew God did and she began to invite them to church. She taught them to read, to pray and began teaching them etiquette and hygiene. In 1885 when Amy was 17 years old, her Father died. This left the Carmichaels poorer than they had been, but they were a long way from the destitute people Amy continued to work with.
Meanwhile, Amy’s work with the Shawlies continued and grew so large that a mission house was needed to accommodate their great number. Amy prayed for funds to build a facility and the funds came in! She asked a mill owner for land on which to build and it was donated. Amy gained affiliation with the YWCA and more than 500 girls were involved in the activities offered almost every night of the week. Soon, the work of “Welcome Hall”, as Amy called the building, became known to Christians all over the British Isles. She was asked to open another place in Manchester, the great factory city in the west of England. Amy traveled there and lived in the slums as she worked to build another “Welcome Hall”. She reflected on her life there and felt that she could endure anything now that she had endured the filth of the slums. Did she have an inkling of what was to come?
About this time, Amy visited a friend and attended a meeting of the Keswick Convention. The purpose of the convention was a return to holiness. They did not discuss the formation of a new sect, nor was it a doctrinally heavy meeting. Christians were exhorted to holy living and they often brought in missionaries as speakers. Amy heard Hudson Taylor speak at one such convention and met Robert Wilson. Robert Wilson, cofounder of the Keswick Convention, had recently lost his daughter, about Amy’s age. He took a fatherly interest in Amy and asked to adopt her in 1890. Mrs. Carmichael agreed.
She was adopted and tutored by this godly man, and through his influence she began to reinforce her spiritual reading. Robert Wilson had once said to her, “Be a deep well, daughter.”
Amy responded to the Lord’s call to the mission field in her twenties. She was single at the time and remained that way throughout her life. After fifteen months in Japan, Amy Carmichael arrived in India in 1895 with the support of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. She served in India for fifty-six years without a furlough. The focus she carried in her heart for Christ and His work was ever undaunted, causing her to offer prayers like, “Rid me, good Lord, of every diverting thing.” That was Amy. Her gift of prose so often bore this out with a blunt yet eloquent and passionate touch.
Give me the love that leads the way, the faith that nothing can dismay;
The hope no disappointments tire; the passion that will burn like fire.
Let me not sink to be a clod; Make me thy fuel, Flame of God.
She founded and maintained the Dohnavur Fellowship in India where a major part of her work there was devoted to rescuing children who had been dedicated by their families to be temple prostitutes. During her lifetime she rescued more than a thousand children from neglect and abuse. This single woman was truly mother to the motherless. To them she became known as “Amma,” which means mother in the Tamil language. Amy died in India on January 18, 1951 and was buried there.
Amy Carmichael’s life is a model of selfless dedication to the Savior, a life of discipleship and abandonment. She lived for one reason, and that was to make God’s love known to those trapped in utter darkness.
After a severe fall in 1931 she was bedridden for nearly the rest of her life. That in-and-of-itself is amazing when you consider some of the most enduring ministry performed through her life was accomplished in those years. No doubt it was during this time she plumbed the depths of her now famous words, “Learn the blessedness of the un-offended in the face of the unexplainable.” She was obviously no stranger to hardship and suffering for our Lord’s kingdom and Glory, Hers were kingdom values. Our values determine our evaluations.
If we value comfort more than character, then trials will upset us. If we value the material and physical more than the spiritual, we will not be able to “Count it all joy!” If we live only for the present and forget the future, the trials will make us bitter, not better. If a Christian cannot rejoice in his trials, his values are not godly and biblical. Nobody understood this better than Amy who summed it all up in this poem:
Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star,
Hast thou no scar?
Hast thou no wound?
Yet, I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned me against the tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed me, I swooned:
Hast thou no wound?
No wound? No scar?
Yes, as the Master shall the servant be,
And pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole: can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?
Ultimately Amy became a prolific writer, producing thirty-five published books including His Thoughts Said … His Father Said (1951), If (1953), and Edges of His Ways (1955). Best known, perhaps, is an early historical account, Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India (1903).
Obedience, total commitment, and selflessness were the marks of Amy Carmichael’s life. In a world where the thought of living one’s life for Jesus Christ above all else is rapidly fading, she remains a bright and ever burning example of one whose sole existence was devoted to her beloved Lord and Savior. Another observation to make concerning Amy’s life is that she was faithful in the little things of ministry and therefore God was able to entrust her with more responsibilities as her faithfulness continued. She obviously evaluated her gifts and sought to use them to the glory of God and she was flexible enough to do His will at every turn.
God may or may not take you, as He did Amy Carmichael, to some far away land. However, He does have a plan for your life—to use you as His light of eternal hope and forgiveness to others. Ask Him to make His will perfectly clear. The rewards of God are not based on human achievements or financial success. They are given, instead, to those who “settle some things with Him” as she would say, and commit themselves to Christ through a life of obedience and selfless devotion.
