Although the school year is nearing its conclusion and my kids will soon not to be woken up at 6:30 each morning, we’re still in the final throes of the year, so I’m still waking them up with a chapter or two from some good, godly books. This most recent time around, we read this biography of Amy Carmichael which really taught me a lot about this Giantess of the faith.

Amy Carmichael’s story is one of devotion to serve the Lord wherever possible. Although first dedicating herself to Japan, her health could not endure the cold humidity, and so she eventually found opportunity to move and share the Gospel alongside a team in India. Completely unfamiliar with this foreign culture, she found it difficult to adapt and even to understand the many quirks of ancient Hinduism. Eventually, though, she donned her sari, befriended some women, learned some of the cultural taboos as well as some ways to skirt beyond them, and began reaching a few Indian women for Christ.

What really drove her ministry, however, and made her a household name in Christian communities (even today) was her love for children and her recognition of the vile and wicked lives into which many Hindu children were being sold. The book doesn’t go into too much detail (little ears and all), but one can assume the worst. “Ancient” women in their 30s would seek out pretty young girls whom they could buy from poor families and wed them to the temple. What abuse these children endured beyond this is left in secrecy in this book, but Carmichael’s venture into the temples to spy out the truth and her subsequent reaction to try and buy or rescue as many girls as possible might give us a clue.

Carmichael eventually opened a home for these rescued, purchased, or runaway girls and received international funding through her faithful efforts to spread the word. She would eventually realized that many young boys found themselves in similar predicaments inside these wicked temple walls, and she eventually opened another wing to house some recued young men as well.

Carmichael’s life in this ministry was not an easy one. Fraught with health concerns, overwork, a dwindling team, death, and eventually an injury that left her bedridden for 2 decades before her death, one might look at her as perhaps the most miserable of servants. Yet she was also a prolific writer, and her books and articles were a constant source of inspiration to the Christian world, a fact which brought her great encouragement through her most trying and painful seasons.

Her story reminded us much of Gladys Aylward (we had recently read These Are My People from the same publisher). Gaining such brief overviews of the lives of these wonderful women, I hope, will serve to inspire my own kids to consider how the Lord might want to use them for his service someday. Both of these women began as—in the world’s opinion—generally useless, and yet both pursued the Lord’s leading, landed where He sent them, saw the greatest needs in the lives of the orphans and helpless, and sacrificed everything to bring them Hope, not only in this life but also in the life to come.

One great passage stuck out to me, which recalls Carmichael’s fiery response to the naysayers who didn’t think she was really doing the Lord’s work:

But some people back in England complained, “Is this really mission work you are doing?” they said. “Just taking care of children and raising crops and building buildings? You aren’t out winning souls!”
“Well,” Amy observed, “you cannot save and then pitchfork sous into heaven! And as for buildings, souls (in India, at least) are more or less securely fastened into bodies. Bodies cannot be left to lie about in the open, and as you cannot get the soul out and deal with it separately, you have to take them both together.” (167)

I want to meet that woman! I think my kids (10 and 12) really enjoyed this one, as they continued their cry (more often than not) for “just one more chapter!” That usually happens only with novels, so that gives bonus points to how this biography reads. I’m hoping to find more biographies just like this book, and I think that the BJU Press will be a great place for me to start looking.

©2023 E.T.

Read More from JourneyForth Press:

• With Wings as Eagles by William Pinkston (1983)
• These Are My People by Mildred T. Howard (1984)
• Medallion by Dawn L. Watkins (1985)
• Derwood, Inc. by Jerri Massi (1986)
• A Dangerous Game by Jerri Massi (1986)
• Treasure in the Yukon by Jerri Massi (1986)
• With Daring Faith by Rebecca Henry Davis (1987)
• Courage by Darkness by Jerri Massi (1987)
• Some Summer! by Jean Vandervenne (1987)
• Llamas on the Loose by Jerri Massi (1988)
• The Runaway Princess by Milly Howard (1988)
• Abandoned by Jerri Massi (1989)
• A Question of Yams by Gloria Repp (1992)
• Brill of Exitorn by Peggy Downing (1994)
• Peanut Butter Friends in a Chop Suey World by Deb Brammer (1994)
• The Lost Prince by Peggy Downing (1995)
• Tales from Dust River Gulch by Tim Davis (1996)
• Camp Sierra Secret by Esther G. Wilkinson (1996)
• Chickadee Winter by Dawn L. Watkins (1999)
• Songbird by Nancy Lohr (2000)
• Nix by Penny McKnight (2006)
• Shield by Dawn Watkins (2008)