It’s All Amy’s Fault

A few evenings ago we were on the way to Wal-mart. Dusk was coming on as we pulled up to the traffic light. There he was at the door. About five years old, plastic bank in hand with no mother in sight. His eyes looked in hopeful expectation. This was difficult to swallow. Worse however are the mothers sitting on the dirty sidewalks wrapped in a blanket, no shoes with a malnourished baby in arms. They look old and worn from difficult living.

Some of you probably get tired of hearing what seems to be the ugly side of life here and would prefer a focus on the sunny side instead. Let me just go on record as saying – It’s all Amy’s fault.

In her book, Things as They Are, Amy Carmichael exposed the reality of India and impacted our perspective in writing. She said, “It is more important that you should know about the reverses than about the successes of the war. We shall have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact of the reverses is so little realized, and the needed reinforcements are not forthcoming, as they would be if the position were thoroughly understood….So we have tried to tell you the truth – the uninteresting, unromantic truth.”

For that reason we are compelled to tell you the “unromantic truth” about dirty-faced malnourished children, vows to the saint of death, abused women, superstition, corruption, misplaced devotion, monuments to gods, loneliness, darkness and hopelessness…

If you are tired of it all, we understand, we are too. What you must also understand is that – It’s all Amy’s fault.