What an amazing and unique God He is.

God cares just as much about the individual as He does the masses.

I recently learned something about the missionary Amy Carmichael. I had read her story years ago, but the biography didn't really touch on the end of her life. Amy Carmichael was a missionary in India in the early 1900s who had a thriving orphan ministry. But the last 20 years of her life she was not able to do much with it. 

Amy fell, hurt her leg, and never fully recovered the ability to walk with ease.

Instead, she spent most of her time at her home writing and praying. The ministry she built so faithfully was taken over by others.

Now, if I was God, I would have looked at all the children Amy was helping and left her there. Clearly the masses were being helped. But God is not just concerned with the masses. He is also concerned with the one.

Because no matter how it looked on the outside, the last 20 years of Amy's life were not wasted. It was 20 years of shaping, refining, and building her relationship with Jesus making it even stronger and sweeter. Amy helping the masses was amazing. But Amy becoming more like Jesus was just as important.

God longs for the widow and the orphan to be helped, to be loved and cared for by His Body. But God also longs for those same helpers to grow into the image of Jesus. Therefore, He will sometimes remove a person from effective ministry and put them in a season of shaping, refining, and removing. 

God cares for the individual and his or her relationship with the Lord just as much as He cares for the unnamed masses who also need Him so desperately.

What an amazing and unique God He is.