To call Oswald my mentor is a bit like suggesting a Jedi master might tutor a mouse, and yet I've come to think of him as not only my mentor but my friend. We are absurdly different in many ways, but in some ways we are kindred spirits. I look forward to meeting him one day. I don't know if he will feel the same way, but we'll see.
My attention was drawn a few days ago in the biography to something about Oswald's wife, "Biddy" (Gertrude). I should explain first that from Oswald's teenage to young-adult years, he had a friend named Chrissie. The friendship was very close; a number of his letters to Chrissie are included in the biography. It was long assumed that Oswald and Chrissie would marry -- some friends apparently even suspected they were secretly engaged.
The relationship eventually ended. Some years following, he met Gertrude Hobbs, whom he married.
The thing that made me catch my breath was a passage describing Gertrude's upbringing and her gift for shorthand. When she was young, she was so often ill in the winter that eventually she left school. She helped at home, but also filled her time with the study of shorthand, in the aspiration of one day becoming secretary to the Prime Minister. McCasland explains further:
Two weeks before Gertrude's fifteenth birthday, her father died at the age of fifty, leaving the family in financial difficulty. Dais finished school and secured a good position with the civil service. She continued to live at home, generously contributing to the family income.
By the time Gertrude was old enough to work full time, she could take shorthand dictation at the phenomenal rate of two hundred and fifty words per minute -- faster than anyone was likely to talk. [...] *
Oswald Chambers died a year before the end World War I, at the age of 43, following a burst appendix. Biddy eventually realized it was God's calling for her to type and distribute her husband's talks -- a phenomenal undertaking, but one for which she was very well-equipped. It also buoyed her spirit.
When I read about her exceptional talent for shorthand and how it had come to be developed, it brought me almost to tears. This may sound strange, but I'll try to explain.
The story includes many sad events:
As a child, Gertrude had to forfeit her education due to bad health. Then her father died, leaving the family in a financial crisis. Oswald died in the prime of his life; many wondered why God would allow the years of such a man to be cut short.
And yet here I am, like many others, being stretched much further in my walk with God than would ever have been possible if God had not allowed painful events. God equipped Biddie through the things she suffered, to be His perfect vessel for something wonderful He had in mind. If Oswald had not died prematurely, with the war still on, perhaps those shorthand notes of Biddy's might have sat on a shelf collecting dust. As you will see in the video I've linked to below, the first sermon Biddy typed up and distributed came in response to a request from a friend, who felt the soldiers Oswald had worked with in Egypt would be encouraged to receive a copy of one of his sermons.
God had, and still has, a perfect design in all this. To us, setbacks and sad events tend to look like they would hinder God. But in fact, He often uses these things to spin some of the finest gold imaginable.
I'm delighted to share with you a short biographical video I found the other day, produced by the Oswald Chambers Publication Association. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
My Utmost for His Highest: The Legacy of Oswald and Biddy Chambers
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*David McCasland, Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God: The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost for His Highest (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Discovery House Publishers, 1993) 140.