And now I must tell you about the sun. The sun shines. He sends forth his beams and gives warmth. He awakens and strengthens life. Should he disappear, everything would suddenly be dead, really dead! But it is not one and the same thing whether the sun shines on a rock or on a flower. Certainly the sun has also awakened life from rocks. In hearts of stone that will not be called to life, the light of God works in a different way than in a heart that receives the light.
- Eberhard Arnold
January 07,2026
- Eberhard Arnold Salt and LightIt is a simple thing: joy in everything that lives. Anyone who can rejoice in life, in other people, in the fellowship of church community – anyone who feels joy in the mutual relationships of trust and inner fellowship – such a person experiences what love is. Anyone who cannot feel joy cannot live.… Only where there is joy do love and justice dwell. We need the spirit of joy to overcome the gloomy spirit of covetousness, the spirit of unjust mammon and its deadly hate. We can only have such joy if we have faith, and if we believe that the earth has a future.
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Jesus paves the new way for God to enter the world. This new way seeks out darkness but does not fall prey to it. Not until now can God, in the outpouring of his Spirit, unfold his heart to humankind in full forgiveness and reconciliation.
- Eberhard Arnold, December 1890
There is a certainty in which we accept—really take—that for which we have asked. But this is possible only when the Spirit himself can fully speak within us. God speaks when we are silent. His will becomes powerful when our self-will becomes quiet. His power is evident when our weakness no longer is “strength”.
- Eberhard Arnold