God himself is the giver. The Spirit gave God’s fiery brand into the Son’s hand. The torch of wrath became the giver of life. The glowing heat of judgment has gushed forth into the fire of life. It lives in the light of love which liberates and gathers us.
- 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 reality of repentance and of our smallness is effective only if one takes the smallness for granted. As long as that which moves us is not God and His kingdom but instead “my” heart, “my” inadequacy, “my” remorse and “my” repentance, the whole thing is and remains a completely heathen idolatry.
- Eberhard Arnold
Like the water of the mountains, the Spirit of the heights seeks the lowest place. He strives downwards. His Church bears the lowly and childlike spirit which alone is of God. She is with Mary in the stable. The Church comes into being with Christ on the gallows. She goes the way of apostolic poverty. With her one mind and one heart, she honors no one but God in Christ Jesus.
- Eberhard Arnold