Amy Carmichael

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes In Church History. I had asked you all, my listeners, for some ideas and many of you sent in, “How about an episode on Amy Carmichael?” Well, here it is, an episode on Amy Carmichael. She was born in 1867, and she died in 1951. She was born in Northern Ireland, but her ancestors were Scottish. On her father’s side, the Carmichaels of the Carmichael clan, they were Covenanters. Amy was the oldest of seven, and Amy was the leader of the pack, and she was known for being rather adventurous. At the age of 15, she was converted, and a few years later she was visiting friends in Glasgow and attended some meetings of the Kazakh Convention or the Kazakh movement. And so she was affiliated with the Kazakh movement through the rest of her life.

By now, she was living in Belfast, and she began a mission work for the factory workers, the female factory workers, in that city. They were called shawlies, because of the shawls they wore. She opened another mission in the city of Manchester, and then in 1892, she heard these words, “go.” And of course, this is from, “Go ye,” quoting the King James version of the Great Commission in Matthew chapter 28. And so, she heard the words, “go,” and she said she would say, “yes.” She immediately sent a note to her mom and informed her of her plans, and her mom wrote back to her that He has lent you to me all these years. So, now that God is calling you, I can’t say no, she says. She ends the letter with, “He is yours and you are his. I can trust you to him, and I do.” Well, that was 1892. In 1893, she was sailing the Pacific Ocean for Japan via China. She did about a year’s work there in Japan, and then she moved on to India.

She arrived in the final weeks of 1895, and this would be her home all the way until her death in 1951. Over the 55 years in India, here’s what she did. She started with work among young girls, much like she did back in Ireland. Then that expanded out to work among young boys. Many of these young girls and boys were temple girls and temple boys, and they were the property of the Hindu temples, and some of them would escape. In fact, there’s a famous story that illustrates this. One of these young ladies named Pearl Eyes heard of a woman who helped children, and so she bravely escaped from her Hindu temple. She made her way onto a little road, leading into a village, bumped into a woman, and asked this woman if she knew of the woman who would help her. Well, the woman knew that she meant Amy Carmichael, and so she took her to Amy Carmichael. And the moment Amy saw her, it was early morning, she was on the veranda of her home, and she was eating breakfast, and she said, “God has brought you to me.”

Well, there was the mission house there caring for these children, discipling them, teaching them. And then in 1928, she started work on a hospital. This sprawling complex came to be known as the Dohnavur community. At its peak, 1,000 people were in it, getting medical treatment, getting discipled, moving on, some staying to staff it, and there was Amy over it all. During this time, she also wrote many books. She would publish 37 books in her lifetime. She also built nearby, in a cooler part for the summer months, a town that the children and the staff could all move to, and she was visiting it as a construction site.

There was a large pit that was dug, and in the darkness, she fell into it and broke her leg. But they learned that she had also damaged her spine. She would spend the next 20 years bedridden, but from her bed, she would run it all as she had for the decades previous. Dr. Nancy Robbins was a missionary doctor who cared for Amy in her final years of life. Dr. Robbins speaks of how the hard years and being bedridden for two decades combined to leave Amy mostly in significant pain, but she said of Amy, "She was always more interested in other people." Well, that's the life of Amy Carmichael. Giving her whole life, decades, to mission work in India. And I'm Steve Nichols. Thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.