a life abandoned to god.

I got this biography of the 19th century missionary Amy Carmichael when I was about 12, read it, and it's been sat on my shelf ever since. I decided I should read it again and brought it back to Belgium with me after Christmas. And once I got round to starting it, couldn't put it down :)
Here's the blurb on the back:

"For Amy Carmichael, the road to Dohnavur, India, was paved with many memories. The sight of the poor old woman struggling with a heavy bundle in Northern Ireland… the foggy church hall in England where the hand of God seemed to rest on her… and the picture of Jesus praying in the garden, and then offering Himself as the ultimate sacrifice.

Surely if Jesus could give everything He has, she could do no less. And so in 1895, Amy Carmichael embraced an unusual mission, one that would last for the remaining fifty-six years of her life. The Dohnavur Fellowship would become, under her loving guidance, a place of sanctuary for more than one thousand children who would otherwise have faced a bleak future.

Amy Carmichael's service for God also extended to the printed page, as she wrote nearly three-dozen Christian books. Her life was characterizes by obedience, total commitment, and selflessness, and serves as an example to Christians today. Those the world regarded as less than lovely, Amy Carmichael saw with the eyes of God… and gave her life for them."

A great thing about this biography too, is that it quotes lots of other books and biographies that Amy loved to read and got encouragement from. One I thought was really beautiful, was from something written by a guy called Samuel Rutherford, who I know pretty much nothing about. But it was a comfort to her when, not long after she started taking in girls, several of the youngest died;

"You have lost a child? Nay, she is not lost to you who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star which going out of sight doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere; you see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that she hath gotten of eternity; and you have to rejoice that you have now some treasure laid up in heaven…There is less of you out of heaven that the child is there…"

Buy this book here.