How glad I am that you are so positively united with me in the experience of peace and of Jesus’ spirit of love! The question is not at all one of our only refusing to do military service, though people always put it in this negative way. This refusal, after all, follows as a matter of course from a positive experience of the Spirit of Christ. When this Spirit, which is expressed so very intensely in the Sermon on the Mount and in Romans 8, penetrates us and glows in us, then we will become victorious people who must work as long as it is daylight—work in the productive, creative work of love.
- Eberhard Arnold
- Eberhard Arnold, January 1920 From an EssayJustice and love demand that everyone take part in simple practical work with a spade, hatchet, or rake. Everyone should be ready to devote a few hours every day to this practical work; those who have done purely mental work till now will feel its humanizing effect especially. In this way it will be possible for each person’s unique gifts to be kindled. The light that flickers within each heart will then exhibit its once-hidden glow in scholarly research or in music, in expressive words, or in the craftsman’s art in wood, stone, or paint…such work will reveal the joy in life that is in each person. Only death knows idleness and tedium. Where there is life, the mind’s creative will remains alert and comes to expression in the service of the whole.
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Yesterday's quote
April 26,2026
Where God heals and makes well, He grants perfect peace on the basis of faithfulness and of faith. He who follows the Spirit says with the prophet, “As long as I live, peace and faithfulness shall reign.”
- Eberhard Arnold
April 25,2026
We are able to cope with the demands of today’s needs only when we have found the inward concentration in God. And this we find only when the lightning of God’s kingdom has fallen down to earth and lit up the whole horizon.
- Eberhard Arnold
