What Do I Know Of Calvary Love?
“Conscious that the work of the mission needed to accurately reflect Christ to those who watch them, Amy Carmichael held the work to the highest standards… One of her early biographers subtitled his book, ‘The Story of a Lover and and Her Beloved.’ And those words hold the secret of that beautiful and uninterrupted life of Christian service—a life in which the only things that mattered were those that were eternal.”
― Dr. John Snyder, Week 9 of Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically
Amy Carmichael was a faithful 20th-century missionary to India, serving, exemplifying, and pointing those around her to Jesus Christ. She founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, a Christian mission and orphanage which rescued hundreds of children in India.
In her little book If, Carmichael writes in profound, beautiful, and convicting way on the truths of Calvary love:
There are times when something comes into our lives which is charged with love in such a way that it seems to open the Eternal to us for a moment, or at least some of the Eternal Things, and the greatest of these is love.
It may be a small and intimate touch upon us or our affairs, lights as the touch of the dawn-wind on the leaves of the tree, something not to be captured and told to another in words. But we know that it is our Lord. And then perhaps the room where we are, with its furniture and books and flowers, seems less “present” than His Presence, and the heart is drawn into that sweetness of which the old hymn sings.
The love of Jesus what it is
None but His loved ones know.Or is it the dear human love about us that bathes us as in summer seas and rests us through and through. Can we ever cease to wonder at the love of our companions? And then suddenly we recognize our Lord in them. It is His love that they lavish upon us. O Love of God made manifest in Thy lovers, we worship Thee.
Or (not often, perhaps, for dimness seems to be more wholesome for us here, but sometimes, because our Lord is very merciful) it is given to us to look up through the blue air and see the love of God. And yet, after all, how little we see! “That ye may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge”—the words are too great for us. What do we comprehend, what do we know? Confounded and abased, we enter into the Rock and hide us in the dust before the glory of the majesty of love—the love whose symbol is the Cross.
And a question pierces them: What do I know of Calvary love?
IF I have not compassion on my fellow-servant even as my Lord had pity on me, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
IF I am afraid to speak the truth, lest I lose affection, or lest the one concerned should say, “You do not understand,” or because I fear to lose my reputation for kindness; if I put my own good name before the other’s highest good, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
IF I myself dominate myself, if my thoughts revolve round myself, if I am so occupied with myself I rarely have “a heart at leisure from itself,” then I know nothing of Calvary love.
IF I cannot in honest happiness take the second place (or the twentieth); if I cannot take the first without making a fuss about my unworthiness, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
IF I take offense easily, if I am content to continue in a cool unfriendliness, though friendship be possible, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
These are just a few of Amy Carmichael’s “Ifs.” We encourage you to get your own copy of If or pick up your copy and read slowly and prayerfully through these.