The little stable in Bethlehem was the place where the love of God broke through. The mysterious men out of the East followed the Star and discovered the place of breaking-in, where the mystery of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where the love of God had broken through. That is the most important thing for every man, to discover in his own time and at his own hour the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the Star that has risen for him and to remain true to the light that has fallen into his heart.
- Eberhard Arnold, 1935
August 26,2025
- Eberhard ArnoldOne sign of apostolic mission and outreach by all movements of the spirit in earlier Christianity and later the Hutterites is this: while it is the custom of the institutional churches and religious gatherings of all kinds, to prepare their meetings with propaganda and the ringing of church bells and illuminated advertisements, the apostolic messengers follow, from place to place, the active Spirit, who tells them where the expectant and prepared hearts are to be found, where the people are who are moved and touched by God’s Spirit, so that the decisive message may be brought to them. Such men are to be found everywhere. We must be led to them through the Holy Spirit who guides us; they must be led to us through the Holy Spirit who leads them.
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The last prophet of the old time who was to precede the coming Christ was filled with the Holy Spirit when He was still unborn. His father and mother too became filled with the Holy Spirit for Him. Mary received the Spirit before Jesus’ life began. In this same way the apostolic Church, which from the beginning of its way followed Jesus, was full of the Holy Spirit. “When they had prayed, the place where they were gathered was shaken, and all were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke God’s Word with joyful courage.”
- Eberhard Arnold
Let us enter these days of Christmas and with all our hearts ask God to move us with his thoughts: that we may think along big lines, not only in continents, not only in planets, but in the largest constellations; that we may think not only in cycles of years, but in decades, centuries, and millennia, in the dimensions of God’s thoughts, in God’s great sweeping curves.
- Eberhard Arnold, Advent 1934