Unlit Candles: Part 2

I have been challenged to think about the people in this world that are still living in darkness. People who have never heard the message of hope Jesus brings. People whose difficult and bitter lives we will never begin to comprehend until we live among them. But maybe we don’t want to. The American Dream seems easier. Happier. Safer. Why give up my nice things when I can be an active member of church right where I’m at? That country, that city is unsafe. Unsanitary. Unfriendly.

One night as Amy Carmichael, a missionary in India, lay awake and listened to drums beating to tell of someone’s death, she saw this:*

“That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw not bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.

Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step…it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!

Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters.  All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks, as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound…

Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down…

What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it? God forgive us! God arouse us! Shame us out of our callousness! Shame us out of our sin!”

*Taken from Amy Carmichael's book "Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India"