Godly Mothers and Wives

Pastor Tim has been using Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest this year as his morning devotional guide. He has made reference to it in his postings as well as sermons. It is the most powerful devotional guide I have found and is now in print in over 40 languages.

Doing a little research, I found that it was first published in 1927 and has been in print ever since; over 70 years. But, since Chambers died in 1917 how could he have written a book that was published 10 years later? Who actually wrote it and the more than 30 titles that bear his name?

The answer: his Godly wife.

Gertrude (Hobbs) Chambers, nicknamed “Biddy” by her husband, suddenly became a widow and single mother of a four year old at the age of 33, when Oswald Chambers died unexpectedly while serving as a YMCA chaplain in Egypt during WW I. When Oswald died, he had published one book.

Oswald and Biddy had one daughter, Kathleen who remembers her mother as a loving mother with a gift for hospitality. But God had uniquely prepared Biddy for what became her life’s work; transcribing her husband’s sermons into books. She did this for most of the rest of her life.

Biddy was a sickly young girl, and had studied shorthand from a book. By the time she was old enough to work, she could take dictation at 250 words a minute; faster than most of can talk, particularly those of us from the south. Little did she know that God was preparing her for her life’s work.

Oswald and Biddy had both felt called to ministry. They founded the Bible Training College to fulfill that call. They operated the college, and ministered to a large number of students until Oswald left to minister to soldiers in Egypt. That school touched innumerable lives during its short existence, sending many to the mission field.

For most of their seven years of marriage, during lectures in his bible school as well as sermons in England and Egypt, Biddy was there, taking verbatim notes of his every word. I don’t find any record of either of them saying why she took these notes, but there is no doubt that God had a hand in it.

After Oswald’s death, Biddy returned to England with her daughter. She operated what amounted to a boarding house to ministerial students. In addition to being a mother to her daughter, she spent countless hours poring through her notes of his sermons, turning them in to the books we think of as Oswald Chambers’ books. Over the next 40+ years, she remained in the background as many around the world continue to read what she wrote down and edited. Without her, Oswald Chambers’ timeless words would probably not be known. Without her we would have never read a single page of My Utmost for His Highest.

I thought that this Mother’s Day would be a good time for this story, not just for her, but to honor all of the Godly mothers and wives around us, who do all the “behind the scenes” work in our homes, our churches, and our lives.

God Bless You! God Bless You All!

Happy Mother’s Day!

This is a guest post by Bill Davis, who occasionally guest posts here. You can see his blog at http://chickenroadwisdom.blogspot.com/