"Let us for a moment imagine what would have happened on the Galilean hillside, when our Lord fed the five thousand, if the Apostles had acted as some act now. The twelve would be going backwards, helping the first rank over and over again, and leaving the back rows unsupplied. Let us suppose one of them, say Andrew, venturing to say to his brother Simon Peter, 'Ought we all to be feeding the front row? Ought we not to divide, and some of us go to the back rows?' Then suppose Peter replying 'Oh no; don't you see these front people are so hungry? They have not had half enough yet; besides, they are nearest to us, so we are more responsible for them.' Then, if Andrew resumes his appeal, suppose Peter going on to say, 'Very well; you are quite right. You go and feed all those back rows; but I can't spare anyone else, I and the other ten of us have more than we can do here.' Once more, suppose Andrew persuades Philip to go with him; then, perhaps, Matthew will cry out and say, 'Why, they're all going to those farther rows! Is no one to be left to these needy people in front?'
"Let me ask the members of Congress, Do you recognise these sentences at all?"
--Eugene Stock, at Shewsbury Church Congress
......The women looked very reproachful. Then one of them said, looking up at me, "You say this is very important. If it is so very important, why did you not come before? You say you will come back again if you can, but how can we be sure that nothing will happen to stop you? We, are some of us, very old; we may die before you come back. This going away is not good." And again and again she repeated, "If it is so very important, why did you not come before?"
Don't think that the question meant more than it did. It was only a human expression of wonder; it was not a real desire after God. But the force of the question was stronger far than the poor old questioner knew; it appealed to our very hearts.
The people saw we were greatly moved, and they pressed closer round us to comfort us, and one dear old grandmother put her arms around me, and strocked my face with her wrinkled old hand and said, "Don't be troubled; we will worship your God. We will worship Him just as we worship our own. Now, will you go away glad?"
The dear old woman was really in earnest, she wanted so much to comfort us. But her voice seemed to mingle with the voices from the homeland; and another --
we heard another -- the Voice I had heard on the precipice edge -- voice of our brothers', our sisters' blood calling unto God from the ground.
Friends, are these women real to you? .....Can you looks at it [pictures of the indian people/women] and say, "Yes, I am no my way to the Light, and you are on your way to the Dark. At least, this is what I profess to believe. And I am Sorry for you, but this is all I can do for you; I can be very sorry for you. I know that this will not show you the way from the Dark, where you are, to the Light, where I am. To show you the way I must go to you, or, perhaps, send you one whom I want for myself, or do without omething I wish to have; and this, of course is impossible. It might be done if I loved God enough --
but I love myself better than God or you."
You would not say such at thing, I know, but "Whoso hath this world good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"
--Amy Carmichael, Things As They Are: Mission Work in Southern India.
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