The Graciousness of Uncertainty - Chambers, Oswald

Foreword to the First Edition

Do you know the clear water of a mountain stream running through the shadowy places of the trees and of the brown and green mosses? Here and there is a crystal pool, hidden beneath a rock still it seems, like a mirror while yet all the lovely light and life of the running stream passes through it continually. Such a shadowy living pool is my thought of the life of the beloved student of the b. T. C. Whom we used to call lambie.13 her life was spent in the quiet places, but it held the tragic sorrows and the deep joys of those who really are alive as human men and women created of god.

Bodily suffering and weakness were often her portion (due to a fall from her horse while still a young girl keen of all outdoor pursuits), but never her conquerors: sacrifice and duties wilfully undertaken and shared with the ones she loved best, instead of a self-chosen and deeply desired career elsewhere these were hers. The countryside loved and trusted her, and took her teaching and her preaching to their hearts and consciences because they saw her life from day to day, and it was so very really that outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace that the sacramental out-giving by word and prayer was to men a real and valid thing. Greatly beloved might be written of her. And to those who enjoyed her inner friendship that friendship must be one of the indestructible and eternal things because in their lives and in hers it is hid with christ in god. One who loved her said in my hearing how beautiful her spirit would be in its manifestation when this mortal shall have put on immortality, and on those occasions when one caught it glancing out of her eyes i realised the truth of what he said.

The current of her inner life ran swiftly, con- trolled as well as indwelt by the holy spirit. She was trusted to speak often in the name of jesus christ our lord for she never lowered his standard of truth, nor failed to set the personal knowledge of him as the one essential goal for men and women in their life on earth. She preached jesus christ and him crucified in its deep individual and racial implications. Thank god for her life. It is a gladness to think of her.

Katherine ashe14 Cairo, January 1938