Biscuits...

I won't be blogging very frequently for the next two months. I'm working on my next book: Only for my King: a Song of Service and Surrender. This book will include, in addition to scriptures, examples of historic and contemporary people who served (or are serving) God.

One of them is Amy Carmichael. I'm saving most of my thoughts on Amy for the book, but this quote was so funny and so thought-provoking that I had to share it with you now. In this letter, Amy is writing about the new missionaries she's been meeting and what she thinks of the institutions that are training thse missionaries:

I don't pray for milk biscuits [“biscuit” is a British term for “cookie”]...all cut to a pattern and stamped with a single decorous pretty stamp. So many places, to judge by the results, seem to be great biscuit manufacturers and they turn out tidy boxes of biscuits. I pray for soldiers, not biscuits! (p. 303 A Chance to Die, a biography of Amy Carmichael by Elisabeth Elliott)

I picture the Little Scholar chocolate biscuit cookies when I read this. Look for them at Albertsons or Cost Plus World Market. They are delicious. They are beautiful. But every single one of them is identical. Amy Carmichael thought that serving God required a bit of uniqueness, and a willingness to be a risk-taking soldier.

I'll let you come up with your own soul-searching application question to this.