A Chance to Die

possibly refuse. Who would pick up the reins? John Risk had the qualities of leadership she looked for, but was comparatively young and lacked Godfrey’s experience. The Lord was aware of all that. John must be God’s man. Who was to tell him so if not Amy? Who else was in a position to appoint him?

She wrote to him almost at once to say she expected him to take over. She was, willy-nilly, still the leader, still a prophet after the order of Judas and Silas who ‘‘exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them.”¹

“As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee”² was the verse she gave to her “David.”

Early in 1950 it was decided that it was time to invite Indians to join the leadership group which for twenty years had comprised only May Powell and the Webb-Peploes. There were two who had had all the training the DF could give—Mimosa’s oldest son Rajappan and Ponnammal’s daughter Purripu. They became associates, Rajappan working with John on the men’s side, Purripu with May on the women’s. Amy came to a settled peace that this now was the Pattern shewn.

Her phenomenal strength drained rapidly away after the fall in the bathroom. There was no more walking out under the trees or even across the room for Amma. She could not sit, let alone walk, stand, or kneel. She learned a new appreciation for each of these positions, which it had been her habit to use as helps to prayer. She was reduced to the one least conducive to prayer, the one she had never chosen—lying on her back. Throughout her life she had taken to her Lord every least thing, pleasant or unpleasant, in order to live the whole of life in Christ, discovering in each experience how He shared it with her. It was entirely natural that she should mention to Him this matter of being pinned flat. Could there possibly be a spiritual lesson there? Would it be something whereby to help somebody else? In answer, she “seemed to see Him, as He was for a few immeasurable minutes, not upright but laid flat on His Cross.

“I tell you this because some of you may find yourselves in hard ways. Always your Lord has been before you. Always He will come with a most heavenly understanding of what your heart most needs.”

Or doth another gird thee, carry thee

Whither thou wouldest not, and doth a cord

Bind hand and foot, and flying thought and word?

An enemy hath done it, even so,

(Though why that power was his thou dost not know)

    O happy captive, fettered and yet free,

    Believe, believe to see

Jesus Himself draw near and walk with thee.³

If it was hard to pray while supine, it was at least as hard to write. But she kept at it, lying with the paper tilted against a blotter, conscientiously finishing This One Thing and courageously turning out her letters and tiny notes as long as her hand would do her bidding.

When severe neuralgia in the right shoulder and hand made her fingers almost immovable, her New Zealand nurse tried to encourage her to exercise to keep them from stiffening completely. One day she said, “Alison, I have been trying all day to join thumb and forefinger and I cannot. Do you think that I will be able to move them again?” Alison told her that probably she would not. She lay quietly for a time, then said, “I gave that hand to the Lord for Him to use”—she remembered the exact year—“and now He has taken it again.” Further silence. Then she quoted the words of Jesus, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”⁴ She knew she would not write again. It was dictation after that.

Alison became ill and had to go back to New Zealand for further treatment. Before she left she was able to go and see Amma in her room. Each knew it would be the last time.

“Alison, we won’t meet again in this world. When you hear I have gone, jump for joy!”

1. Acts 15:32.

2. Joshua 1:5.

3. Toward Jerusalem, p. 86.

4. Matthew 20:15.

Chapter 51

One Thing Have I Desired

On the wall of my study hangs a thin brass Celtic cross with the ancient inscription, IHS, for In hoc signe vinces (“In this sign conquer”). It used to lie on the table next to Amma’s bed where she could finger it in the night and put her mind on those brave words. She would, by grace, by her Lord’s cross and passion, keep on conquering, keep on climbing, keep on being God’s “athlete” in her bed. She asked one of the men to cut a large cross out of black poster paper to be hung where she could see it in the dimmest light, to be for her a reminder “of pain far greater than mine.”

Another comfort in the painful nights was the text which Nancy had given her to allay her fears about becomimg a burden. From Revelation 2:9, 10, the words I KNOW . . . FEAR NOT. . . were inscribed on a piece of teak and hung with a light over them.

Amy’s friend Bishop Pakenham Walsh sent her the words of the hymn “In Heavenly Love Abiding,” by A. L. Waring. She kept them also by her bed, especially comforted by the last stanza:

Green pastures are before me

Which yet I have not seen,

Bright skies will soon be o’er me

Where the dark clouds have been.

My hope I cannot measure,

My path to life is free,

My Savior has my treasure,

And He will walk with me.

In one of her last dictated letters she included these words, and added, “I am very happy and content. Green pastures are before me, and my Savior has my treasure—the DF.”

Mary Mills reported in December 1950, “Our Amma is going through a very difficult bit of the way. She is definitely losing ground on this side, and the longing grows ever more for