The expectation of God’s future is as all embracing as it is unshakably certain; it cannot be a passive waiting, a cozy and soft occupation with self and with one’s small circle of like-minded friends. No, this expectation is divine power – a uniting with the powers of the future that are present here and now. This is our hope: the assurance that the social justice of the future is effective now wherever Jesus himself holds sway.

- Eberhard Arnold

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