People who have been gripped by God can only look upon all transitory inequalities as a rousing incitement to the brotherhood of perfect love. The same need, indebtedness and insignificance made them all “poor”, as they liked to be called, especially in the earliest epoch, because their faith in the one God and their attitude to material goods could only be understood as poverty.
- Eberhard Arnold
January 06,2025
- 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 a force like a streaming flood, a reviving wind, an almighty power. It alone can bring all the mills of human work into action. It can be compared to a mighty torrent whose waters overflow, while the overflowing power and movement of its depths perform the greatest task.
- Eberhard Arnold
Joy in God’s love fills believing hearts to overflowing, so much that their love has to go out to all men. All men shall become the object of this joyful faith; one after the other they are to be encompassed by love and the perfect community of love. The spirit of justice and peace and joy is the Spirit of the Church.
- Eberhard Arnold