Many have come across and perhaps also read a daily devotional with the title “My Utmost for His Highest.” It has become the most popular book of its kind but many who have read it will not know exactly how it came into being. This matter prompted the Vancouver based author Martha Christian to begin a search for Mrs. Oswald Chambers. This quest fitted in with her desire to understand something of what it means to be the virtuous wife described in Proverbs chapter thirty-one, maybe the one who signed herself ‘B.C.’ at the end of the original introduction in “My Utmost” was just such a lady. For some readers the style of this autobiography of Oswald Chamber’s wife and of his daughter Kathleen, who figures prominently in these pages, will detract a little from the subject matter, but if we let ourselves be carried along with her unfolding discoveries concerning Gertrude Hobbs who became Oswald’s wife there are ample rewards and helpful instruction in the way she lived to illustrate that true spiritual womanhood is possible in the these later times. After some enquiry she was able to contact the elderly daughter Kathleen living in Muswell Hill London. A friendship developed over several years during which Kathleen asked that Martha should be the one to author a book about her mother and also wrote letters answering her enquirer’s questions and so a picture emerged, of Oswald, Gertrude (who was known as Biddy) and of Kathleen. We could sum up this book by saying it is the story of three women and their walk with God, first that of the seeker Martha Christian, second Mrs. Oswald Chambers and third, daughter Kathleen. At times we almost feel that the first overshadows the other two in the way the story unfolds, but, having said that, we must thank the authoress for her determination to follow her journalistic instincts and her spiritual hunger and so give us this particular offering, uncovering as it does, more of the wonder of God’s ways with the Chambers family. Biddy Chambers died in 1966 and Kathleen her daughter passed on in 1997 at the age of eight-four. How the ministry of Oswald Chambers that has come to us through the faithful labors of his godly wife Biddy has enriched the lives of multitudes of Christians.
