The believing and loving people who are united in the holy flame protect not themselves but the flame of the Spirit which is the only assurance of true life. They do not seek to keep their own life; they seek alone that of the holy fire in which they have lost their own nature.
- Eberhard Arnold
January 06,2026
- Eberhard Arnold Why We Live in CommunityWe love the soil because God’s spirit spoke and created the earth, and because he called it out of its uncultivated natural state so that it might be cultivated by the communal work of human beings. We love physical work – the work of muscle and hand – and we love the craftsman’s art, in which the spirit guides the hand. In the way spirit and hand work together and through each other, we see the mystery of community. God – the creative Spirit – has formed nature, and he has entrusted the earth to us, his sons and daughters, as an inheritance but also as a task: our garden must become his garden, and our work must further his kingdom.
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The peace of God is the living, effective, infinitely rich and moving harmony of life to the full. “Whoso findeth me, findeth life”—that is the revelation it brings.
- Eberhard Arnold
God does not work by only one method, paint in only one color, play in only in one key, nor does He make only one star shine onto the earth. God’s mystery is the rich spectrum of color that is gathered together in the purity of the sun’s white light. The symphonic harmony of all the stars is built up on precisely their manifold variety. But all this is gathered together and will be gathered together at the end of time in the unity of the kingdom of God.
- Eberhard Arnold