“I SERVED THE LORD WITH GREAT HUMILITY.” ACTS 20:19 NIV
Biddy Chambers
My Utmost For His Highest is the world’s best selling devotional book. Yet without his wife Gertrude Chambers, the unrecognized driving force behind Oswald Chambers’ writings, we wouldn’t have this book at all, In the Forward, she tells how the selections
came from his various speaking engagements. Yet she signed only with the initials B.C. Who was this remarkable woman? Her husband affectionately called her “Biddy,” a term of endearment. Oswald died as a result of complications following surgery in Egypt where he’d been ministering to the British Troops. Thousands mourned his death at 43. So well loved was he by those he ministered to that in spite of the fact that he wasn’t part of the military, he was still given a full military burial in the old British cemetery in Cairo.
They were married for just seven years when, at age 34, Biddy became a widow and the single mother of a little girl. Actually, the real story of the man’s fame began at his death. Before she met Oswald, Biddy was a stenographer. She could take shorthand faster than many of us could talk. So she began listening to her husband’s messages and took shorthand notes — hundreds of them — never thinking that one day they’d be transcribed into books and that she would become the publisher of them. The world owes a debt of gratitude to this humble and generally unknown ~yoman whose efforts are still blessing so many May God give us more people like her; people who believe that great things can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit.
