‘Missionary life is simply a chance to die’. Amy Carmichael
Sometimes our biggest hindrance can yield the choicest fruit, if we’re willing.
Paul was an apostle, but also the first missionary to the Gentiles and it’s notable how much of his time at the end of his life was spent in chains. Paul witnessed at length to some very important people while he was a prisoner and most importantly for us he also wrote letters(epistles).
‘… pray that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains’. Eph 6:20
‘Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David(he was a Jewish Messiah). This is my Gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of being chained…’. 2 Tim 2:9
Amy Carmichael was born in N.Ireland on 16 December 1867 and she later founded an orphanage and a mission in southern India to rescue young girls from temple prostitution. She worked fifty five years without furlough, no jet aircraft in those days, India became her true home.
I haven’t read her story for some time but in 1931 she fell and became bedridden for much of the last two decades of her life. She wrote many books during this time and her writings reached a much wider audience than her mission work. I believe the Lord asked her if she would give Him permission to use her in those last years as He wished, before her fall. So her greatest incapacity became the most productive season of her life! (Much of her story is available online).
When she died aged eighty three, she asked that no gravestone be erected over her grave. The children put a bird bath with the single word ‘Amma’, mother, because they said she loved them.
‘It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desire that He creates’. Amy
God bless you and keep you today.