Amy Carmichael: The Prayer God Answered with No
A three-year-old girl in Ireland knelt by her bed and asked God for blue eyes. She believed He answered prayer, so she prayed hard and fell asleep sure of it. Morning came, she ran to the mirror, and her eyes were still brown. She decided God had said no. She had no idea He had just said wait.
The Girl Who Prayed for Blue Eyes
That little girl was Amy Carmichael, born in Northern Ireland in 1867. She grew up loving Jesus and aching for the people the world overlooked, from the mill girls of Belfast to children half a world away. When the call to missions came, her heart said, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8), and she never looked back.
The Missionary India Called Amma
In 1901, Amy settled in Dohnavur, India, and stayed for fifty-five years without a single trip home. There she found little girls being sold into temple slavery, and she began pulling them out one at a time. The first was a seven-year-old named Preena who ran into her arms. Soon, hundreds of rescued children called her Amma, which means mother. To slip into the temples unseen, Amy darkened her skin with coffee and wore a sari. Her plain brown eyes, the ones she once wept over, let her pass unnoticed. Blue eyes would have exposed her. God had been preparing the answer all along.
Why God’s “No” Is Often “Wait”
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” God says in Isaiah 55:8. Amy did not understand her brown eyes for forty years. You may not understand your own unanswered prayer for a while, either. A fall in 1931 left her bedridden for two decades, yet she wrote book after book from that bed, trusting the God whose grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). When she died, the children marked her grave with a birdbath and one word. Amma.
Whatever prayer feels unanswered today, hold on. The brown eyes may be exactly what He plans to use. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.
Keep Looking Up!
Pastor Rodney