The Kiss

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  “Ryabovitch pulled the bed-clothes over his head, curled himself up in bed, and tried to gather together the floating images in his mind and to combine them into one whole. But nothing came of it. He soon fell asleep, and his last thought was that someone had caressed him and made him happy—that something extraordinary, foolish, but joyful and delightful, had come into his life. The thought did not leave him even in his sleep. When he woke up the sensations of oil on his neck and the chill of peppermint about his lips had gone, but joy flooded his heart just as the day before.” The Kiss By Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

Chambers on Holiness

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"Holiness is not an attainment at all, it is the gift of God, and the pietistic tendency is the introspection which makes me worship my own earnestness and not the Lord seriously at all. It is a pious fraud that suits the natural man immensely. He makes holy, He sanctifies, He does it all. All I have to do is come as a spiritual pauper, not ashamed to beg, to let go of my right to myself and act on Romans 12:1-2. It is never, 'Do, do and you'll be' with the Lord, but "Be, be, and I will do through you.' It is a case of 'hands up' and letting go, and then entire reliance on Him."

--Oswald Chambers, in a letter to a friend, 1901. McCasland, David. Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God. Oswald Chambes Publications Associations: Thomas Nelson, 1993

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