Candles in the Dark

Introduction

Amy Carmichael was born in Northern Ireland and after a brief period in Japan arrived in India on November 9, 1895, as a Keswick missionary. She never left India until her death in Dohnavur on January 18, 1951. At first she worked in the villages of South India. Then in 1901 she began to make a home for children in need of protection and care. Others came to help her and the Dohnavur Fellowship was born—named after the village in which it is situated. For fifty years she was Mother (Amma) to an ever-increasing family and saw many of her children grow up to serve the Lord by serving others.

In 1931 an accident led to illness and increasing physical limitations. For the last years of her life she was confined to bed, but her indomitable spirit never failed. She continued to counsel and encourage all who came to see her and wrote many books and innumerable letters.

The following letters, written with no thought of publication, have been selected from many hundreds treasured by members of the Dohnavur Fellowship, either her colleagues or her Indian children. Her power to help those in need came from her times of listening to her Lord. Sometimes, she wrote, it is as if another Hand were turning over the pages of my Bible and finding the places for me. Her language is steeped in the older versions of the Bible (she died before many of the modern translations appeared), and a lifetime spent in India gave her an Indian mode of thought.

Pray for me, that the Lord would give me house room again to hold a candle to this dark world, wrote Samuel Rutherford, and this was Amy’s prayer. It is our prayer too, as we share the riches she passed on to us through her close personal walk with the Lord and utter devotion to Him.

B. M. G. Trehane

Dohnavur Fellowship

1 Discipleship

God needs those

who are ready to lay down

their very lives

to lead others into true soldiership

and a true following of

the Crucified.

Training for service

The best training is to learn to accept everything as it comes, as from Him whom our soul loves. The tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life, silly little nothings, things you are ashamed of minding one scrap. Yet they can knock a strong man over and lay him very low.

It is a very good thing to learn to take things by the right handle. An inward grouse is a devastating thing. I expect you know this, we all do; but it is extraordinary how the devil tries to get us on the ordinary road of life. But all is well if only we are in Him, deep in Him, and He in us our daily strength and joy and song.

I have read and reread the bit in your letter about the love that constrains. Nothing less will hold on to the end. Feelings can be shaken and the fight can be fearfully discouraging, for sometimes we seem to be losing ground and all seems to be going wrong. Then the devil comes and paints glorious pictures of what might have been. He did to me—I can see those pictures still. But as we go on steadfastly obeying the word that compelled, we do become aware that it is all worthwhile. We know it, we know Him with us, and that is life.

I am going to ask that the consciousness of His presence with you may be constant and very sweet. I know the difference this makes. But you are not a child in Him; you have passed the point where that is needful. You know Him near, with you and in you. Joy though it be to be conscious of that blessed One, the great thing is not my feeling, but His fact. So if there are fogs on the sea on any day or any night—still all’s well.

Soldiers

It matters a good deal that your book-food should be strong meat. We are what we think about. Think about trivial things or weak things and somehow one loses fiber and becomes flabby in spirit. Soldiers need to be strong.

Soldiers have not time for everything. I have no time for anything outside my profession, a young officer said once, and in measure that is true. We can’t be entangled in the affairs of this life if we are to be real soldiers. By its affairs I mean its chatter and its ways of thinking and deciding questions, its whole aspect and trend.

Everything matters

My prayer for each of you is that you labor in the work from the rising of the morning till the stars appear (Nehemiah 4:21): that is, from your earliest days, the days of your morning, till the last days, the days of your evening, when He whom not seeing you love will call you home to see His face.

Some of you, who are longing to live this life, still hesitate. There is no life in all the world so joyful. It has pain in it, too, but looking back I can tell you truly, there is far more joy than pain. Do not hesitate. Give yourselves wholly to your Lord to be prepared for whatever He has chosen for you to do.

Many of you are preparing for service. This is my word for you: Don’t say It doesn’t matter about anything (except your own feelings), for everything matters. Everything is important, even the tiniest thing. If you do everything, whether great or small, for the sake of your Saviour and Lord, then you will be ready for whatever work He has chosen for you to do later.

A new fellowship

Sooner or later I do trust that your best loved ones will understand and be in sympathy. It must have seemed strange