ALL I DID WAS TAKE NOTES

by Cynthia Ruchti


"The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel [or writing a bestseller], but washing disciples' feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God…now who becomes broken bread and poured out wine in the hands of Jesus Christ for others."  Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest


How many serious students of the God-centric life include in their morning or even routines--their spiritual aerobics--a reading from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest?

Considering this popular devotional hasn't been out of print since it first released in 1927, and that it has been translated into at least 39 languages, and that some reread it annually, it's brain-straining to calculate.

I spoke with a twenty-something young woman who had been given a leather-bound copy of the book with spaces for journal entries on each page. Reading Chambers' straight-forward yet practical approach to obedience to Christ and abandoning ourselves to His purposes awakened a fire within her.

Simple truths expressed in profound ways.

I wonder how Chambers' young widow felt when she transcribed the quote mentioned above. Her husband was the one gifted to preach, to move audiences, to influence others. After he died at 43 from complications from appendicitis, she continued transcribing his teachings from the shorthand she'd used to take notes. All she did was take notes.

We would have none of those words to inspire, nudge, and drive us deeper into God's Word if his wife hadn't used HER gift--lightning-speed shorthand--and if she hadn't devoted countless hours to record Oswald Chambers' messages.

In what ways have you become discouraged because of the humble tasks you've been assigned, the ones that "do not count in the actual estimate of men"? 

Even in the world of the novelist, if you're helping tell others about someone else's book, is it possible that one day someone who's faith has grown from that other book will realize, "I never would have heard that story if my friend hadn't 'taken notes' for me"?



Cynthia Ruchti tells stories hemmed in HOPE. Information about her award-winning novels and nonfiction, as well her speaking topics for women's events and writers' workshops is available at cynthiaruchti.com or Facebook.com/CynthiaRuchtiReaderPage.

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Questions and Answers

Marcia Lee Laycock is the winner of the best New Canadian Christian Author Award from Castle Quay Books. Her novel, One Smooth Stone is endorsed by Marc Buchanan, Phil Callaway and Sigmund Brouwer.


In Bill Roorbach’s book Writing Life Stories, he tells an anecdote about one of his elderly students, a woman of 85. He asked her a flippant question, a question he did not expect her to answer. He asked, “Jane, tell us, what’s the secret to life?”
Roorbach writes -
“Jane smiled benignly, forgiving me my sardonic nature, tilted her head and said without the slightest pause: “Searching.”
An indignant Chuck (another student), said, “Not finding?” quite sure he had it right. “No, no, no,” Jane said emphatically, letting her beatific smile spread, “Searching.” (Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach p.53-54)

Frans Kafka once said - “One reads in order to ask questions.” Perhaps one should also write from that perspective, not to provide, but to seek the answers, those answers that will resonate deep and long as they touch that central part of our being where God resides; those answers that will lead us and our readers to more questions.
The trap of pride lurks, ready to ensnare us. It is in arrogance that we write believing we possess the complete unadulterated truth. Jesus is the only One who lives in that place. Jesus is truth. We are merely those, as J. Hudson Taylor says, who are seeking to bring our own souls under its influence.

Oswald Chambers, who has written one of the most popular devotional books ever written, said - "The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."

I think the author who is most true to himself, and his readers, is the one who admits that truth has been dumbly struggling in her, as well. It is when we as writers struggle to give utterance, struggle toward that wholeness, that holiness, that we succeed, no matter whether the result is published in the New Yorker with an audience of millions or in a local newsletter with an audience of a few hundred.

John 14:6 - "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

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