Faithfulness Is Never Wasted

People sometimes ask me how I’ve remained faithful through trials. I have many responses, but the first is always the grace of God. Left to myself, I would have walked away long ago. But God has held on to me, and as Scripture says, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Tim. 2:13). It really is the Lord’s faithfulness, not mine.

My second response echoes Peter’s words to Jesus when others turned away: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Even when I’ve wrestled with doubts and disappointments, I know there’s nowhere else to go. Only Jesus has the words of life. And I don’t want to be anywhere other than with him through trials.

And my third response is about legacy. My ancestors’ faithfulness has shaped me. Their willingness to give up everything for Christ has become part of the fabric of my own faith. I sometimes wonder if part of the “hundredfold return” Jesus promised to those who sacrifice for him (Mark 10:29–30) is that their descendants would also walk with him.

This reflection continues my series on heroes of the faith, though in this case, the story is closer to home, drawn from the faithfulness of my own family in South India.

Arunasalam’s Costly Conversion

I was born in India, a land where Christianity has always been a small minority. According to tradition, the apostle Thomas brought the gospel to India in the first century and gave his life for it. In the 1700s, new waves of German Lutheran and British missionaries came, men like William Carey, planting seeds that often seemed slow to grow. Many never lived to see the harvest. But those seeds reached into my family line, shaping our story long before I was born.

On my mother’s side, my great-great-grandfather, Arunasalam, was a wealthy Hindu businessman in Sivakasi, a town in South India. One day in the mid-1800s, he picked up a gospel tract in the market. Curious, he read it aloud to his dying 80-year-old father, expecting rebuke. Instead, his father surprised him with words that would change the course of our family:

“Learned son. So as to discover the invisible God, till now we have been groping in the dark and are standing defeated. But the books you have read out to me have depicted him in unmistakable terms and have clarified and illuminated my understanding of God.”

Soon after, his father died, but those words lingered. In 1850, at the age of thirty-five, Arunasalam committed his life to Christ. He shared his newfound faith with everyone, but his brothers considered it a disgrace. When they could not dissuade him, they even tried to kill him because they saw it as a great slur on their prominent family. He fled and was told never to return. His commitment to Jesus cost him his home, his wealth, and his family name.

Yet God gave him a new name. When he was baptized, missionaries called him Vedabodakam, meaning “teaching of Scripture.” He became an evangelist, starting churches, sharing the gospel, and living out the faith that had cost him everything 

Daniel and Rathnam: Quiet Faithfulness

Arunasalam’s son Daniel followed in his footsteps, preaching and planting churches. He was a gifted evangelist and, in 1901, was invited to Dohnavur by Reverend Thomas Walker, who mentored Amy Carmichael. This was the year Dohnavur was founded. But it was Daniel’s son, Rathnam—my mother’s uncle—whose story I have learned most about.

Rathnam, who was known simply as Vedabodakam (and I’ll refer to him that way), had a huge impact on my mother, who would sit for hours with her uncle, spellbound listening to him teach, learning about the power of the gospel. She was given his original typewritten memoir, which was handed down to me, and much of this story comes from that account. When I first read it, decades ago, it was inspiring, though I didn’t fully understand his connection to Amy Carmichael. Later, as I read Amy’s books, I realized the people she ministered with in Dohnavur were my great-uncle’s friends and colleagues.

As a young man, Vedabodakam longed to be a medical missionary but lacked the funds. He was encouraged to go to Dohnavur by his good friend R. T. Archibald, a young British missionary whom Amy mentions in Gold Cord. This was years after his father had been there, and he was hesitant to ask for any favors.

One evening, while speaking to a group of boys at Dohnavur, a revival broke out, with students weeping and spontaneously confessing their sins aloud. Rev. Walker, hearing it from his nearby residence, immediately took notice of Vedabodakam and his gift of evangelism. Impressed by his passion, Walker wrote a letter of commendation to the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in London, which agreed to fund his medical training. (SPCK later published Amy Carmichael’s books.)

After completing medical school, Vedabodakam began serving at St. Luke’s in Nazareth, a small mission hospital in South India. There he was devoted to sharing the gospel and to excellent patient care, with a special focus on those with leprosy. In the ancient world, leprosy was one of the most feared, and easily communicable diseases. It damaged nerves and skin, left people disfigured, and often cut them off completely from family and community. In Jesus’s time, lepers were considered unclean and forced to live outside the city, crying out “Unclean!” wherever they went. Their physical suffering was compounded by crushing isolation. That’s why it was so striking that Jesus not only healed lepers but also touched them. He gave them dignity and restored their place in society—giving back the community disease had stolen.

Vedabodakam shared that same conviction. He believed every patient carried the image of God and deserved dignity, care, and hope. Over time, he expanded the work of St Luke’s and opened a dedicated leprosy hospital nearby. Vedabodakam eventually married Grace, my grandmother’s sister, so both his family line and hers traced directly back to Arunasalam. Grace was also a physician, tirelessly caring for the women at St. Luke’s alongside her husband. The hospital had limited resources, but they trusted God to provide as they worked faithfully, and in relative obscurity.

Their daughter later married Dr. Selvapandian, who worked closely with Dr. Paul Brand—the world-renowned hand surgeon whose pioneering work restored function to leprosy patients—and later succeeded Dr. Brand in leadership. Philip Yancey would go on to co-author The Gift of Pain with Dr. Brand, a book that talks about leprosy and how pain, though unwanted, is one of God’s greatest gifts, protecting us, teaching us, and even drawing us closer to him.

While Vedabodakam’s medical work and ministry encouraged others in their faith, what grounded him was the word of God that anchored his family for generations. His mother, who died when he was four, had hand-painted two verses on scrolls. His grandfather later handed these scrolls to him, saying, “These are your mother’s legacy.” As a young boy, they seemed unimportant, but over time they became precious. The scrolls read:

• “Look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

• “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:2).

He said these verses were ‘a legacy of inestimable value’, shaping his life of steady, humble faithfulness.

Faithfulness That Bears Fruit

My great-great-grandfather Arunasalam gave up everything to follow Christ. My great-uncle Vedabodakam gave his life to treating leprosy patients and sharing the gospel. Neither sought recognition, yet both left a legacy that still shapes me. They didn’t have “large” ministries; they lived faithfully—quietly, steadily, day by day. And the ripples of their lives carried outward through hospitals, generations, and untold numbers of new believers. They are my heroes, though I only know them through the stories handed down to me.

One thread of that legacy reaches back to Rev. Thomas Gajetan Ragland, a missionary in South India who planted a small church in Sivakasi, the very town where Arunasalam lived. Family accounts say the two men met. Ragland died in 1858 at just forty-three, long before the lasting fruit of that work was obvious. Years later, Amy Carmichael reflected on Ragland’s life and reminded her readers that many who sow do not live to see the harvest—yet faithfulness is never wasted.

Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

Their lives remind me that fruitfulness often looks like faithfulness: quiet, daily obedience; sacrifice without applause; trusting God to weave the threads into something far greater than we can see.

And that’s a legacy worth carrying forward.