The Loss of Jewels
When Amy Carmichael’s fellowship in India became the environment in which several young women got the idea that the Jesus Whom they had encountered was wearing a crown of thorns instead of the expected crown of gold, they stopped wearing their jewels. Since the caste-burdened society believed that poverty was a judgement against individuals and their families, their pride led them to prove their social value by how much jewelry their women wore. By ridding themselves of their symbols, some fathers were convinced, they were insulting their families and not submitting to the national culture of caste, created and imposed by Hindu influences and based on the power of karma to condemn and demand payment of any who would not comply. Karma could make one’s next several reincarnated lives miserable and costly.
The girls chose to obey what they sensed the Spirit of their Crucified Lord seemed to be leading them to do. Much trouble came to the Dohnavur Fellowship because of the culture induced by revelation of the cross conflicting with the culture imposed by false religion.
What is in your life that could actually become as valueless as the jewels that decorated the bodies of the servants at Dohnavur? What habits, what possessions, what decorations? What new marks and habits could replace them – marks imposed by revelation of the cross and the payment made there?
But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
(Philippians 3:7-11 Holman Christian Standard Bible ®©)