Woe to a community if it tries from gloomy depression of soul to rise up to the Spirit! All our own cramped efforts to reach the heights end in downfall! Only the liberating Spirit coming down from above is able to lead the inner life of a community to health, to unity, and to the achievement of God’s work, free from all our own efforts.
- Eberhard Arnold, January 1934
September 20,2025
- Eberhard ArnoldBlessed are those who have heart. Blessed are those who love, who build up unity everywhere. Blessed are those who stand with the poor; blessed are those who themselves are poor as beggars. Blessed are those who know themselves as beggars before the Spirit. Blessed are those who are so poor that they hunger and thirst. Blessed are those who feel this hunger and thirst for justice, for the justice of the heart, of love, for the establishment of peace in unity. For they are the people who carry the pain of the world on their hearts, who carry the suffering of the world in their innermost being. They do not think of themselves, for their whole heart is turned toward others.
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We small people must disappear from our own field of vision so that only one question remains in view: “What is happening to God’s Kingdom?” What is going to happen to the injustice of the world situation, which cries out to heaven? How shall God’s Kingdom come? And how can we do away with all distractions so that we come to the cause entrusted to us by the Church?
- Eberhard Arnold, July 1934
We know that here the absolute truth reigns if we experience the unanimity of the believers. The spirit of truth never contradicts itself. We see unity and unanimity as the characteristic mark of absolute truth. This way, because it is the simplest way, the way which unites men in the Spirit, is the way of truth; for it is the way of God’s love, the way of God’s heart, the way of the uniting creative spirit. If this is our certainty, then to work! All hands on deck! Let us dare it, whatever it costs!
- Eberhard Arnold