Love through me, Love of God

Make me like Your clear air

That you pour Your colors through

As though it were not there.

Amy Carmichael, quoted in “Amy Carmichael: Beauty for Ashes” by Iain H. Murray

I love this prayer. Amy Carmichael spent her entire life in southern India providing a home for children in need of safety. Love did flow through her. So much so that the work she began in 1901 continues today. You can read about her and the ongoing work at Dohnavur Fellowship here.

Her one little life helps me “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18 NIV).  Love is spacious and wide. It’s capable of reaching across decades and remaking places where people suffer. It’s the air we breathe but cannot see. It surrounds us, fills our lungs, and, as we exhale, leaves a trail of flourishing life in its wake. Amy Carmichael left behind a long line of people whose lives were changed by her willingness to let God’s love define her life. 

How does love like this grow within us? 

What captures my attention most is the expansive, abundant quality of Amy Carmichael’s ability to love.  She carved out a safe haven for children against all odds. Her life became a conduit for the kingdom of heaven to pour into the place she lived. Through her relationships, through her work, through her compassion and courage, through the writing she left us, love seeped into her neighborhood. The rippling effects of her spacious love are still visible in southern India today. 

How does God’s love shape my life and the place where I live?

Though she died before I was born, her life affected me too. I borrow her prayer for my own life.  When I pray her words, I step into hope with her. Like her, I hope that love sweeps into my neighborhood through my small life. 

What borrowed prayers do you pray? What prayer are you making your own?