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    Plowed Under
    Plowed Under
    Plowed Under
    Ebook164 pages2 hours

    Plowed Under

    By Amy Carmichael

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    About this ebook

    Amy Carmichael, admired writer and missionary, tells the story of Arulai Tara (Star of Grace), the sister of Mimosa. This book reveals the importance of preparing ourselves for obedience to God’s call in our lives; the beauty in remaining faithful in preparing the ground God has given us.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCLC Publications
    Release dateOct 28, 2022
    ISBN9781619580831
    Plowed Under
    Author

    Amy Carmichael

    Born near Belfast, Ireland, Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) left Europe as a Christian missionary to India at age twenty-seven, never to return. Over the next fifty-five years she became Amma (mother) to hundreds of children and wrote dozens of books about the way of discipleship.

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      Book preview

      Plowed Under - Amy Carmichael

      1

      The Call of the Spring

      IN the early evening, when the hills in the distance showed faint and blue, in a patch of rough ground called Field of the Darling-Pool a little girl stood alone. She was barely ten, but for what seemed to her a long time she had been asking questions which no one could answer, not even her wise old father to whom she had shyly brought them.

      There was something austere about the child, something that, in the mood which was upon her then, would have made one who saw her think of a little grey rock cropping up among greenery. But there was something wistful too. She was wrapped in a sari, bright like a blackberry leaf in September, or the breast of a forest minivet, the one warm note of color there, and she waited, still as a leaf, for something to happen, for someone to speak.

      The place known by that affectionate name (because of a spring, which in the Rains became a large pool) was near the prosperous country town of Uncrowned-King in the taluk called Vishnu’s-heaven. The child, whose home was there, waited patiently. There was no one anywhere in sight.

      Who of all the gods was the God of gods, the Sovereign God, Creator? That had been the first question that she had brought to her father. Was it the heavenly Siva, whose ashes she rubbed on her forehead every morning after bathing? There were so many gods, she grew puzzled as she counted them all. Who was the greatest? Was it Siva? Could he change dispositions? If only she could find this out she would be satisfied, for the god who could change dispositions must be the greatest, and surely the greatest must be Creator. Her father had not seemed to know of any god who could do that kind of thing. Gods were to be feared and worshipped. They caused or averted disaster. They did not concern themselves with the dispositions of children. And he had tried to put her off. This had disheartened her, but she had not given up hope of discovering Him whom she sought. There was one way, she reflected, by which she could bring creator-ship and sovereignty down to the test of practical life. She would go through all the gods she knew and find out which of them could change dispositions. She decided to begin with Siva, whose name her clansmen bore. Had not her father gone to his temple month by month, with fasting and with prayer, praying for children to be born to him? And had not the heavenly Siva granted him eleven (of whom she was the fifth, and a certain little girl known now to many as Mimosa, the sixth)? Her heart went out to Siva with trustful expectation. He would change her disposition.

      For she had a hot temper. Often when she was playing with other children (always excepting a boy cousin a few years older than herself), something would provoke her, and she would break out in anger, whereupon they would run away and refuse to play with her. She had tried to conquer the fault, but there it was, strong, and growing stronger in her. She prayed to Siva, crying over and over into the air that never answered her back again, O heavenly Siva, hear me! Change my disposition so that other children may love me and wish to play with me. O heavenly Siva, hear me! hear me!

      But her disposition had not been changed. She had appealed to several other gods, but nothing had happened. And now again the longing for knowledge, for deliverance, for One whom she could adore, to whom she could pour out the love of her heart, was upon her, and she had come to the field where no one could see her. She was all alone now—with whom?

      She waited awhile in silence, the unanswering green things about her, the empty blue sky above her; she lay down with her forehead on the ground, prostrating herself as she had seen her elders do before the god in the temple, and she stretched out her arms and cried, O God, God of all the gods, hear me!

      In one of T.E. Brown’s poems he tells us that he was in heaven one day when all the prayers came in, and he watched them being sorted.

      Then did I see how the great sorter chose

      One flower that seemed to me a hedgeling rose,

      And from the tangled press

      Of that irregular loveliness

      Set it apart—and, This, I heard him say,

      Is for the Master: so upon his way

      He would have passed; then I to him:—

      Whence is this rose, O thou of cherubim

      The chiefest?—Know’st thou not?" he said, and smiled,

      This is the first prayer of a little child.

      All who have heard a child’s first prayer or the first prayer of an older soul, but still a child in the new life, know why and with what expectant love that angel smiled.

      But the child on her face on the ground did not see the angel smile; she did not see anything or hear anything. She rose, shook the dust from her sari, and ran home. And she tried to forget. But a passionate despair possessed her heart, a pain of desire that she could not understand. It had to be so. For when the Beloved discerns a lover in a soul, He fills that soul with consuming thirst, a thirst that no waters of earth can satisfy. It is then the call of the Spring is heard, that unseen Spring that draws the bird from the nest that once was home.

      2

      The Little Sanctuaries

      HOME, to that child of the minivet-colored sari, meant a big white house, full of children, of whom the youngest, a beautiful boy called after one of the household gods, was her great delight. He was so winning that people passing down the street would turn to look at him; for he was fair, as the word is used here (it means that the velvety skin of a child is in color like sunburnt ivory), and his brown eyes smiled at everyone. He was not troubled with smothering clothes. A silver belt made of bells that tinkled with every movement, gold and silver bangles on the little wrists and ankles—that was enough for him. He was his sister’s nursling, for, young as she was herself, she had cared for him from the first hour of his life.

      When he was nine months old, in the dreary wet weather, he died of a lingering dysentery. When his little body was carried away he left desolation behind him, especially in his sister’s heart. Her mother tried to comfort her. She said that she had not wanted him to live because of the sin of the world; the eldest son of that family whose loving pride had named him after the family deity, the ancient god of Korkai, their ancestral city, was already its anxiety, and thinking of him the mother had sorrowfully prayed, Let not my baby live to grow up. But the sad little sister was not comforted. She could not imagine anything so merry and so loving growing up hard and bad. Surely so sweet a thing would have been good? And now where was he? Where was that far away, that forlorn land of the spirits of the dead? He would be lonely, poor little cherished boy, among all those stranger spirits. No, there was no comfort anywhere, for no one could tell her anything comforting. So she found her way to a tamarind tree that grew near the Darling-Pool, and stood under its spreading branches, sick with misery and longing.

      She had by this time almost given up hope of finding a God who could change dispositions; indeed, she had almost forgotten her quest in her absorbing grief, but she felt her way to a new and poignant question now. A Maker of such lovely things as a baby brother must be a great God, but was He good? Was it like a good God to give her such a little brother and then suddenly take him away? Would a good God disappoint, and hurt, and strip all play and happiness from a little girl? Did He not know that she would far rather have died than be left in this bare loneliness? Why did He do such things? Why? Why? And where was He? He must be somewhere; but where?

      There was no answer that she heard to any of her questions, just as there had been no answer to her prayers. And yet, though so baffled, and feeling repulsed and refused, something pressed her on to seek for Him who seemed to hide Himself. Something? It was Someone: Let Thy loving Spirit lead me forth unto the land of righteousness—she did not pray that prayer. She did not know enough to pray so great a prayer, nor to whom to offer it, nor that there was a loving Spirit at all. But we have such an understanding God that He knows what we would say if we knew enough to say it. For, as the Tamil has it, Thou knowest my thought in the distance. Before the word was born in my tongue, lo, Thou, O Lord, hast known it all. And so the loving Spirit, hearing the word before it was born on her tongue, led her forth to seek the land of righteousness:

      The seeker finds, none other, only he.

      The gold lies hid; the shell conceals the pearl;

      All veiled in green the rubies of the larch;

      A common stable hides the King of kings,

      A corner of Uncrowned-King. Star’s home is the two-storied white house opening on the street. the photo was taken from the attic wheree the boy was tied to the pillar.

      One of the little sanctuaries; but the acacia bushes that used to surround the pool have been cut down for firewood, and nothing is left but the old tamarind which once dropped a pod at the feet of the little girl.

      And now, moved by new thoughts, she made herself little sanctuaries where she could pray to Him whom she knew not yet: an attic in her own home; a place in her father’s field among the grain before it was harvested; and in his cotton field among the low bushes with their soft floppy leaves and primrose-colored, crimson-hearted flowers. When their capsules burst and held out the white cotton-wool, she was there again. The jungle saw her too, and the tall thorn that daintily hung his mauve tassels just out of reach of the goats. But more often she found her way to the Field of the Darling-Pool. The air was scented there, for the Pool was fringed with low acacia bushes covered with perfumed yellow balls. As she thinks of it she sees the rough grass, the clumps of rushes, the shapeless, old, gnarled tamarind tree, and the Darling-Pool that looked up like a bright eye from that clustering, fragrant green.

      3

      Lead Us to Souls Prepared

      AND while these things were so at Uncrowned-King, in an old dilapidated bungalow near the village of Great-Lake, in the taluk of Vishnu’s-heaven, three people were asking for guidance. The taluk (the word is Arabian and means division of a district) is an attractive place. Greek writers of the first and second centuries speak of Korkai, one of its vanished cities. Marco Polo, who came to South India in A.D. 1292, writes of another great and noble city—Cail,

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