I wonder what Oswald thought about financial planning. It seems like Christianity and responsible money management are inextricably linked in America today. Everyone in his right mind plans for a rainy day, right? Anything else is poor stewardship -- irresponsible.
Apparently, however, Oswald didn't plan. When he died of complications following an operation to remove his appendix in 1917, his wife, Biddy, and child, Kathleen, were left without any long-term means of support.
When they returned to England, according to David McCasland's book, Abandoned to God, "Biddy was sustained by occasional gifts of food and money from family and friends," p. 275. Even after she started publishing Oswald's work, she was so intent on continuing the work that she put all of the money back into the next project: "Biddy took nothing for herself and Kathleen." And when they did get a place of their own, it was primitive: "They had no electricity, no running water, a coal fire for cooking and an outdoor toilet." Next, she ran a lodging house while putting My Utmost for His Highest together in her -- few and far between -- spare moments.
Biddy did not have an easy life. Perhaps if he had known, Oswald might have wanted to spare her that. She herself said, "Future plans are uncertain, but we all know that there is first God's Plan to be lived, and we can safely leave everything to Him, 'carefully careless' of it all," (Abandoned to God, p. 274).
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