Christmas

Topic

Selected Reading

Quick Quotes

Perhaps you have waited for years to be freed from some need or sin. For a long, long time you have looked out from the darkness in search of the light. Maybe you have a difficult problem that hasn’t been solved, in spite of great efforts. But then, when the time is fulfilled and God’s hour arrives, a solution, light, and deliverance will come quite unexpectedly. Perhaps quite differently than you might think. Hasn’t this happened to you before, just as a baby comes at his own time, and no impatience or hurrying can compel it – but then it comes with its blessing and full of the wonder of God? Hasn’t God’s help come to you sometimes in this way?

- Eberhard Arnold

Christmas did not come after a great hoard of people had completed something good, or because of the successful result of any human effort. No, it came as a miracle, as the child that comes when his time is fulfilled, as a gift of the Father which he lays into those arms that are stretched out in longing. This is how the first Christmas came; in this way it always comes anew, both to us as individuals and to the whole world.

- Eberhard Arnold

There is no event in the history of salvation that so expressly calls forth joy as does the experience of Christmas. Into the world of fear and worry, right into the midst of all our troubles, comes the proclamation of great joy, “Today a savior has been born to you!”

- Eberhard Arnold

Additional Reading for Christmas

When the Time Was Fulfilled
The meditations in this collection witness to the fact that the birth of Jesus is more than history – it is a reality – but only for those who feel their need and are personally ready to come to the manger.