He died at 43. His wife turned his notes into the most-read devotional in history

Oswald Chambers was born in Aberdeen in 1874 and spent the first part of his adult life in a state of spiritual crisis. He trained as an artist, studied at a Bible college in Dunoon, and eventually underwent what he described as a complete interior transformation after a period of extended and painful seeking. The transformation came not through finding new answers but through a total surrender he had been resisting.

He became a teacher and speaker, known for a directness that many found uncomfortable. He did not soften the demands of Christian faith to make them more palatable. He taught at Bible Training College in London from 1911, where his wife Biddy attended every lecture with a shorthand notebook. She transcribed everything.

In 1915 Chambers went to Egypt as a YMCA chaplain, serving troops stationed there during the First World War. He died in November 1917 from a burst appendix, a condition that might have been treated had he not refused the hospital bed, insisting it be given to a wounded soldier. He was 43.

Biddy spent the years after his death organising, editing, and preparing his lectures for publication. My Utmost for His Highest was first published in 1927, ten years after his death. It has been in continuous print ever since. In many years it is the bestselling Christian book in America.

What Chambers would have made of this is impossible to know. He spent his ministry preparing others and accepting assignments that did not obviously lead anywhere public. He never had a large platform. He died in a military camp in Egypt, largely unknown outside the circles he had personally touched. The work that outlasted him was done by someone else. His only contribution was to live in a way that made the work worth preserving.