Oswald had known Gertrude Hobbs casually through mutual friends. Afflicted early in life with bronchitis, Gertrude had worked diligently to perfect her short-hand skills, achieving a remarkable speed of 250 words a minute. Her goal was to someday work in the secretarial offices of Britain's monarchy. But before that came an ocean voyage to America, where she intended to pursue a job opportunity. Also on the ship that crossing: Oswald Chambers, brother of her family's pastor.
Oswald was a bachelor and Holiness-movement Bible teacher in London before his life direction turned to evangelistic work among Australian and New Zealand troops in Egypt during World War I. Earlier, during his ministries in England and the United States, he became better acquainted with Gertrude, whom he'd nicknamed “Biddy” (for “beloved disciple”). In marrying Chambers, instead of using her shorthand in service of the British king, Biddy used them for their Heavenly King. When Chambers spoke, she would be in the audience taking down his words in shorthand to later transcribe.
His ministry would take them in 1915 to Egypt, where he preached to soldiers under the auspices of the YMCA. Sometimes hundreds of soldiers would pack his wooden-framed hut to hear his messages. While there, in 1917 he died of appendicitis, having resisted medical care for his health emergency, saying the wounded soldiers needed medical care more. His death left Biddy (and their young daughter) living under what one biographer called “very straitened circumstances” (meaning financially difficult).
Returning to England with their daughter, Biddy devoted the rest of her life to transcribing 29 years of shorthand-saved sermons and lessons into messages for publication. Most successful of his forty-plus books would be a daily devotional titled My Utmost For His Highest, prepared while she also ran a boarding house in Oxford. England. Since its publication early a century ago (first self-published in 1924, then commercially in 1927, then in the US 1935), it has never been out of print, and has sold more than 13 million copies and been translated into 39 languages.
One takeaway from her story: you never know what God can do with a skill entrusted to you. Because of Biddy's diligence in using shorthand—because she gave her utmost for God's highest--more than a hundred years later, Oswald Chambers still speaks.
