Let us try to grasp the message of peace and of Christmas, the glad tidings of God’s kingdom. If we look at Jesus, the inconspicuous and lowly one, we begin to understand what expectation and fulfillment truly entail. We begin to grasp that a poor birth in a manger and a humiliating death on a criminal’s cross is the only way expectation can lead to fulfillment.

- Eberhard Arnold

In the course of the centuries people everywhere have possessed a joyful, holy expectation of a time when justice and love will prevail. Often it is only a hidden longing for unity with others. Yet through every century runs the thread of this secret hope for a time when peace and justice will come, when the Eternal One will rule completely. There is no culture on earth that has not carried this hope deep in its heart.…And again thousands of years have passed, and here and there humankind has felt and received something of the mysterious radiance of his birth.

- Eberhard Arnold

The Son of Mary, God’s salvation, is the only One in whom the divine spirit of freedom, justice, and love finds its shape, unbroken and unhindered. Hence, the call to repentance never ends in pessimism, but rather in the certainty that the knowledge of God and the liberation from injustice must go deep and be far reaching.

- Eberhard Arnold