I recently read excerpts from a very interesting book called "A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael" by Elisabeth Elliot. It is an excellent and thorough book about one woman's story of calling to fulfill the Great Comission and her faithfulness to live out that calling, even through suffering. What a wild adventure this Christian life is!
"I saw that the chance to die, to be crucified with Christ, was not a morbid thing, but the very gateway to Life."
She told a story that I really related to on my mission field visits. When visiting a foreign field, night time does not necessarily equal quiet and peacefulness outside when you want to sleep. If it's not mariachi music or people laughing outside your window, it will for sure be roosters and other animals (crickets, etc.) letting their voice be heard. I also relate to the necessity of flexibility in changing the 'day's plans' at a moment's notice when on the mission field and doing without the comfort of privacy and quiet.
"It was good missionary training. If one is preparing to storm the bastions of heathendom, it won't do to blench at creepie-crawlies. Another lesson Amy learned was to do at a moment's notice whatever was required... She learned to do without things most precious--privacy and quiet. The neighborhood was not what her family would have thought "safe," and once, walking to the railway station, she was mobbed by hooligans. She walked on unafraid, cheered by the story of a brave ancestor who had marched through a hostile crowd. In Amy Carmichael the faith of her fathers was living still."
"Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them."
"You who can resist the half-articulate pleading of many and many a heart today, can you resist this? From millions of voiceless souls, it is rising now--does it not touch you at all? The missionary magazines try to echo the silent sob. You read them? Yes; and you skim them for good stories, nice pictures, bits of excitment--the more the better. Then they drop into the wastepaper basket, or swell some dusty pile in the corner. For perhaps "there istn't much in them." Very likely not; "there isn't much" in the silence any more than in darkness, at least not very much reducible to print; but to God there is something in it for all that. Oh! you--you, I mean, who are weary of hearing the reiteration of the great unrepealed commission, you who think you care, but who certainly don't, past costing point, is there nothing will touch you?"
Yikes! May these challenging words of our missionary friend cause us, in overflowing love for God and those created in His image, fulfill the calling God has placed on our lives, however we possibly can, every day.
Another brilliant word that I really agree with:
"The training of a missionary should begin in the nursery; school should continue it; home should nourish it. All influences should be bent one way. That training should not be perplexed by a mixture of thoughts, but expressed in a single line of conduct, clearly recognized for what it is... After it has rooted, let the winds blow as they will. Then they will only cause the roots to take a firmer grip."
