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About the Book
"The Crippled Lamb" is a heartwarming children's book written by Max Lucado. It tells the story of a lamb named Joshua who feels different from the others because he is born with a crippled leg. Despite feeling left out, he eventually discovers that his uniqueness is a gift from God, and he plays a special role in the birth of Baby Jesus. The book teaches valuable lessons about acceptance, friendship, and the true meaning of Christmas.
Amy Carmichael
Born in Belfast Ireland, to a devout family of Scottish ancestry, Carmichael was educated at home and in England, where she lived with the familt of Robert Wilson after her father’s death. While never officially adopted, she used the hyphenated name Wilson-Carmichael as late as 1912. Her missionary call came through contacts with the Keswick movement. In 1892 she volunteered to the China Inland Mission but was refused on health grounds. However, in 1893 she sailed for Japan as the first Keswick missionary to join the Church Missionary Society (CMS) work led by Barclay Buxton. After less than two years in Japan and Ceylon, she was back in England before the end of 1894. The next year she volunteered to the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, and in November 1895 she arrived in South India, never to leave. While still learning the difficult Tamil language, she commenced itinerant evangelism with a band of Indian Christian women, guided by the CMS missionary Thomas Walker. She soon found herself responsible for Indian women converts, and in 1901, she, the Walkers, and their Indian colleagues settled in Dohnavur. During her village itinerations, she had become increasingly aware of the fact that many Indian children were dedicated to the gods by their parents or guardians, became temple children, and lived in moral and spiritual danger. It became her mission to rescue and raise these children, and so the Dohnavur Fellowship came into being (registered 1927). Known at Dohnavur as Amma (Mother), Carmichael was the leader, and the work became well known through her writing. Workers volunteered and financial support was received, though money was never solicited. In 1931 she had a serious fall, and this, with arthritis, kept her an invalid for the rest of her life. She continued to write, and identified leaders, missionary and Indian, to take her place. The Dohnavur Fellowship still continues today.
Jocelyn Murray, “Carmichael, Amy Beatrice,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 116.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
“Ammai” of orphans and holiness author
Amy Carmichael was born in Ireland in 1867, the oldest of seven children. As a teen, she attended a Wesleyan Methodist girls boarding school, until her father died when she was 18. Carmichael twice attended Keswick Conventions and experienced a holiness conversion which led her to work among the poor in Belfast. Through the Keswick Conventions, Carmichael met Robert Wilson. He developed a close relationship with the young woman, and invited her to live with his family. Carmichael soon felt a call to mission work and applied to the China Inland Mission as Amy Carmichael-Wilson. Although she did not go to China due to health reasons, Carmichael did go to Japan for a brief period of time. There she dressed in kimonos and began to learn Japanese. Her letters home from Japan became the basis for her first book, From Sunrise Land. Carmichael left Japan due to health reasons, eventually returning to England. She soon accepted a position with the Church of England’s Zenana Missionary Society, serving in India. From 1895 to 1925, her work with orphans in Tinnevelly (now Tirunelveli) was supported by the Church of England. After that time, Carmichael continued her work in the faith mission style, establishing an orphanage in Dohnavur. The orphanage first cared for girls who had been temple girls, who would eventually become temple prostitutes. Later the orphanage accepted boys as well.
Carmichael never returned to England after arriving in India. She wrote prolifically, publishing nearly 40 books. In her personal devotions, she relied on scripture and poetry. She wrote many of her own poems and songs. Carmichael had a bad fall in 1931, which restricted her movement. She stayed in her room, writing and studying. She often quoted Julian of Norwich when she wrote of suffering and patience. Many of Carmichael’s books have stories of Dohnavur children, interspersed with scripture, verses, and photographs of the children or nature. Carmichael never directly asked for funding, but the mission continued to be supported through donations. In 1951 Carmichael died at Dohnavur. Her headstone is inscribed “Ammai”, revered mother, which the children of Dohnavur called Carmichael.
Carmichael’s lengthy ministry at Dohnavur was sustained through her strong reliance upon scripture and prayer. Her early dedication to holiness practices and her roots in the Keswick tradition helped to guide her strong will and determination in her mission to the children of southern India.
by Rev. Lisa Beth White
The Dying World Outside My Window
“What a mystery,” wrote Horatius Bonar, “the soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of another.” What a mystery, I then thought, that I do not speak more. I gazed out of my window. Three houses stood across the street. Of two, I had to ask myself, Who lives there? What were they doing as I read and prayed? Although I had not yet met them, I knew much about them. They — whoever they were — like me, had been born in sin. They, like me, had souls. They, like me, careened irreversibly towards eternity. They, like me, were tempted to ruin their souls, blinded and energized to do so by unseen spiritual forces. And they, like me, lived deceitfully mundane lives upon a thread floating between heaven and hell, now and forever. As I looked at the homes which sheltered eternal beings, I realized that my voice had not yet traveled across the street. Even though I knew news that they desperately need to hear and a “him” that they were made for (Colossians 1:16), my voice had not bothered to make its way to speak to them, befriend them, and share with them the most necessary message to ever grace human ears: the gospel of Jesus Christ. What a mystery, that the soul and eternity of one man depends on the voice of another — and that the voice upon which souls depend would be so terribly silent and unconcerned. To the Highways and Hedges It is not an overstatement that souls depend upon us to speak. How will they believe if they never hear (Romans 10:14)? “It is not an overstatement that the world depends upon the church to speak.” Each one of us has a part to play; each has work of the ministry to accomplish (Ephesians 4:11–12). Standing far below the electing love of God, you and I muster our courage to knock on doors, to invite neighbors for dinner, to reason with them about God, sin, and Jesus Christ — his cross and resurrection. We all have people to tell the bad news of their condemned standing before a holy God, and the good news of amazing grace that God, in the gospel of his Son, is reconciling sinners to himself. What kind of man — and I stare at him in the mirror more often than I like — could so calmly smile and wave, laugh and chitchat with his dying neighbor, and yet rarely get around to opening my mouth to witness to the authority, love, and mercy of Jesus Christ? Devils wink as sinners perish. Demons dance as the lost submerge undisturbed. Saints, as we see them in Scripture and church history, do not join them, masking their indifference with tutored speech about God’s sovereignty to excuse inactivity. They weep, they fast, they pray. They walk across the street, they share their very lives and this great news, this only news of reconciliation with God. They speak the name — the only name given under heaven — by which we must be saved. As ambassadors of Christ, they implore the lost, “Be reconciled to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:20). They happily go to the highways and hedges of this fallen world, and compel them to come into the Master’s great banquet (Luke 14:23). When you look out your window, when you scroll through your text conversations, when you sit down at the dinner table, or enjoy laughter with friends, do they know? Have they heard? What else should we discuss if not this? But oh, how much do we discuss instead of this. Beyond Personality Types Some do not speak because you are not as profitably given to the verbal exercise as your extroverted brothers and sisters. What comes fluently, naturally, effortlessly for others requires great toil and courage for you. For whatever reason, speaking to strangers is very uncomfortable — your throat clenches in protest, you become short of breath, you grow very self-conscious. Perhaps you replay embarrassing moments early in life, when you seemed to speak English as a second language. Thus, this part of our Christian calling, speaking the good news to others, comes to you with dense clouds and a darkness to be felt. Though you are not the mouth of the Body, your voice — and perhaps especially your voice — is needed, my brother or sister. Your words, rarer and thus less inflated, can do what those whose words are voluminous cannot do as easily: come with weight. We need your testimony to the steadfast love of God. Consider less what your sweaty hands and rapid pulse has to say about you, or how Myers-Briggs describes you. Let God dictate who you are and how you see yourself. Who You Are Who are you? You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10) Once you were less than nothing. A child of Satan, a spiritual harlot, a rebel defying the living God. You wallowed in the blood of your fallen father, Adam, without hope and without God in the world. But he, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved you — a love unsought, unreturned, undeserved — made you alive together with Christ. And this excellent Christ, not considering his equality with God something to be grasped, became poor so that you might be rich — died so that you might live (2 Corinthians 8:9). “Have we forgotten the wonder and privilege of bringing the power of God for salvation to lost souls?” And he made us a people — his people. And he gives us a voice, a purpose: to proclaim his excellencies. We, so seemingly unimpressive and nonthreateningly normal — saints with normal jobs in normal neighborhoods — carry the spectacular message next door and across the street: Christ has died for the forgiveness of sins for all who repent and believe the gospel. This gold lies in jars of clay. We must let it out. We must speak, and go on speaking. It depends not on what our strengths are nor on what personalities we possess — it matters who Christ has made us to be. And he has made us his chosen race, his royal priesthood, his holy nation of people who are satisfied in his excellencies — and can’t stop talking about them. Any Sweeter Work? Have I, have you, have we, forgotten the wonder and privilege of bringing the power of God for salvation to lost souls? Do we now count it a burden? Spurgeon asks each one of us, [We who are] sent on so sweet a service as the proclaiming of the gospel, how can we tarry? What, to tell the poor criminal shut up in the dungeon of despair that there is liberty, to tell the condemned that there is pardon, to tell the dying that there is life in a look at the crucified One — do you find this hard? Do you call this toil? Should it not be the sweetest feature of your life that you have such blessed work as this to do? To speak of him and live lives of love that do not blaspheme his holy name — do we not feel that this is a very small response to such a great salvation? Jesus was slaughtered in the garbage heap outside the camp so that we might go out to him and “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13:15). “What a mystery,” wrote Horatius Bonar, “the soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of another.” What a mystery indeed. Let’s not deprive our neighbors of ours this year, but resolve to send out our voices as light into the darkness, proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus Christ. Article by Greg Morse Staff writer, desiringGod.org
