Amy our Amma
19th January 2024
I want to share with you the story of Amy Carmichael, who as remembered by the church on Thursday. I think she’s a really inspiring person:
She was the eldest of seven children in a Christian family from Northern Ireland, and was born in 1867. From her earliest years Amy’s faith guided her life. In her late teens she started a work among the mill girls in Belfast, showing her organizational skill by founding a church for them and finding a suitable place for them to worship and for her social work with them. She then continued this work among the girls and women of the cotton mills in Manchester.
In !887 she went to a big Christian gathering called the Keswick Convention which changed the course of her life. As she listened to one of the speakers, a man called Hudson Taylor, Amy came to realize that she was being called to overseas mission work. She began missionary training in London. But she became ill – in fact she suffered from neuralgia all through her life. She recovered and joined the Church Missionary Society. After time in Japan and Sri Lanka she was sent to Dohnavur, which is in Tamil Nadu, just thirty miles from the southern tip of India.
While she was there she met a seven year old girl called Preena who was on the run. She had been brought by her family to be a ‘temple sacrifice’. Some young girls in those days were dedicated to Hindu deities and then found that prostitution was a part of their temple duties. Amy rescued her and protected her from the people who wanted to return her to the temple. She went on to rescue many others. Apparently ‘Her heart burned with God’s own love and indignation, and she wrote words which stirred others to come and join her’ which led to the founding of the Dohnavur Fellowship. It developed into a place of sanctuary for more than a thousand children. Their website says; ‘From the beginning it was a family, never an institution. Amy was the mother, loving and loved by all.’
In order to identify with those she helped, Amy wore the clothes of the local women, and even used coffee to darken her skin.
Following a severe fall in 1931 Amy was largely bed-ridden for the last twenty years of her life though she continued to write and she remained the spiritual guide and leader of the Fellowship.
She served in India for fifty-six years without returning to the UK and died on this day in 1951 at the age of eighty-three. She asked that no stone should mark her grave, but the children that she had given her life to placed a bird-bath with the single word ‘Amma’ (Tamil for ‘mother’) over her grave. India outlawed temple prostitution in 1948 but the Dohnavur Fellowship continues, now supporting about 500 people of all ages in a holistic community complete with its own hospital.
I wonder what you find striking about that story?
The way Amy lived out her faith and listened to God’s call…
Her courage and her commitment…
Her willingness to learn…
Her powerful ministry despite her struggles with her health…
You may like to bring this into your prayers:
Loving Lord, as we remember Amy Carmichael, we pray that you will give us ears to hear your call to us, however it comes, each day of our lives…
Lord of all people, help us to notice the needs of those around us – especially those who are vulnerable because of their age or gender or the challenges they face. And give us the wisdom and the will to respond, as Amy did…
Lord, you know our struggles. Help us to trust that you can work through us and in us despite all of this. Help us to discover your grace made perfect in our weakness…