Gold or Stubble

“But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is.” — 1 Corinthians 3:12-13 (ASV)

About 1883 the Carmichaels moved to Belfast, and Amy was brought home from school. The flour business was failing. Then, in 1885, her father died. Amy was seventeen, the eldest of seven, and her mother was left with a large family, a failing business and debts. Amy became, in a real sense, her mother’s partner. At about this time she also began to suffer from neuralgia, a nerve condition that brought attacks of severe pain. It would trouble her for the rest of her life.

The most famous story of her Belfast years is one she told herself, long afterwards. One dull Sunday morning, walking home from church, Amy and two of her brothers saw a poor old woman struggling along with a heavy bundle. They turned back, took her arms and carried her load. Respectable people coming out of church could see them, and Amy felt hot with embarrassment.

As they passed a fountain in the street, words came into her mind so strongly that she turned to see who had spoken: “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble.” It was Paul, in the old Authorised Version she knew. Nobody was there. But at home Amy went to her room alone, and she said later that she settled something with God that day.

Paul is talking about what we build with our lives. Some of it lasts; some of it burns. The test is not how it looks to other people but how it stands in God’s fire. That morning Amy saw that respectability was stubble. The love that bends down to carry an old woman’s bundle was gold. She went on struggling with pride all her life, as she admitted. But she knew where the line ran.

Her biographers record a second turning point in 1886, at a convention in Glasgow. She was struggling, and the speakers didn’t help much. What reached her was a short prayer near the end, drawn from Jude, about the one who “is able to guard you from stumbling.” She went out knowing that Christ was able to keep her. She didn’t have to strain after holiness in her own strength. That was enough.

Then she noticed the shawlies. In Belfast a lady wore a hat and a servant wore a cap. A mill girl, who could afford neither, wrapped a shawl round her head. Thousands of them walked past the churches every morning to the linen mills, where they worked long hours in hot, wet, deafening rooms. Few went to church. A girl in a shawl would have felt out of place among the hats, and many congregations made sure she did.

Amy, not much older than many of them, started a Sunday class for shawlies in a hall belonging to her church. Some members were not pleased to see mill girls on their premises. The girls kept coming, because they could tell she cared about each one. The class outgrew the room, and Amy prayed for a building. She saw an advertisement for an iron hall to seat about five hundred people, at a cost of five hundred pounds. According to the account handed down, a Christian woman named Kate Mitchell heard of the need and gave the whole sum, and a mill owner gave land off the Shankill Road. They called it the Welcome. Sources disagree on whether it opened in 1887 or in January 1889. It still stands, as Welcome Evangelical Church.

God answered her prayer, though through a wealthy woman who heard about it: not asking doesn’t mean nobody knows. Amy saw that danger and tried to avoid it.

Maybe you know the feeling from that Belfast street: being seen with the wrong person, your face going hot. Paul’s question is not “What will people think?” but “Will this last?”

One thing to do this week: notice one person at school, work or church who is left out the way the shawlies were. Do one small thing to make them welcome, even if someone sees you and you feel awkward.