The two best-known devotionals of the 20th century were born out of grief.
Lettie Cowman compiled Streams in the Desert as she endured her husband Charles Cowman’s slow dying. She published the devotional in 1924, the year Charles died.
Perhaps inspired by Lettie’s success with Streams in the Desert, Biddy Chambers published My Utmost for His Highest in 1927–ten years after her husband died.
To honor their husbands, Lettie and Biddy published their work with the men’s names on the devotional covers.
“Mrs. Chas Cowman,” wrote Streams in the Desert.
Biddy didn’t even add the “Mrs.” My Utmost for His Highest’s author has always been Oswald Chambers.
How were the devotionals born out of grief?
In Lettie’s case, she spent the seven years before publishing Streams in the Desert combing Los Angeles used bookstores. Grieving because her husband’s desperate pleas for healing did not happen, she sought anything that would distract him.
As a result, the readings were positive and tended to focus on God’s goodness.
What else could she do to encourage Charles?
(Other than pray and sing hymns, which Lettie did for hours each day).
Biddy had seven years to mourn Oswald’s 1917 death in Egypt, where they served at a YMCA camp during WWI.
She was busy in the years after the war as she tried to reestablish a life in England. She had a daughter, Kathleen, born in 1913, to raise. Friends found their new lives and often went overseas as missionaries.
Times were hard. She didn’t often complain.
But occasionally, grief slipped from under her stiff upper lip.
A few months after her husband’s death, Biddy succumbed to jaundice. She couldn’t think clearly. It felt like a massive brain fog.
Fortunately, friends sent her away to recover, but her illness may have been the result of not taking as much time to grieve as she should have.
Grief focused both women.
Indeed, in later years, Lettie turned to her own devotional for encouragement when blindness descended.
How are the books alike?
Neither book is centered explicitly on grief. Both devotionals focus on God.
Each day’s reading begins with a headline verse from the Bible. The spiritual response is associated with the verse.
Lettie’s readings tend to the folksy, using stories, poems, and quotations from others.
Biddy used excerpts from teachings her husband gave at League of Prayer meetings, the Bible Training College, or at Zeitoun camp, speaking to soldiers.
She weaves excerpts from up to four different talks into a unified whole, amplifying the Scripture passage.
It’s truly a masterpiece of compilation and editing.
Both devotionals center on the Word of God and end with a point–though not every reading is born out of grief.
Nearly one hundred years after Streams in the Desert arrived on the scene, the readings still speak to hearts.
Nearly ninety-seven years after My Utmost for His Highest appeared, the readings often speak to the mind.
Personally, Streams often makes me smile. Utmost challenges me or leaves me confounded–or at least convicted!
After years of studying the authors, I suspect if I asked Lettie about a reading, she’d laugh and play a hymn on the piano!
As to Biddy?
She’d smile her usual enigmatic smile. I can almost hear her say, “Why don’t you brood on the reading and see what God says to you?”
Thanks, Biddy.
I’d love to.
After I’m done singing with Lettie.
Were they really born out of grief?
The widows’ two devotionals were born out of grief in the sense they achieved fame after Charles and Oswald died.
But, Streams in the Desert and My Utmost for His Highest also were the products of two women’s lively faiths that steadfastly chose to believe God, no matter what befell them.
As their biographer, I learned a lot from reading the devotionals, by examining their lives, and the era that produced them.
I love them both.
How about you?
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