Uncloistered

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  “She gazed ahead through a long reach of future days strung together like pearls in a rosary, every one like the others, and all smooth and flawless and innocent, and her heart went up in thankfulness. Outside was the fervid summer afternoon; the air was filled with the sounds of the busy harvest of men and birds and bees; there were halloos, metallic clatterings, sweet calls, and long hummings. Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an uncloistered nun.” A New England Nun By Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930)

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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