It 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.
- Eberhard Arnold
February 29,2026
- Eberhard Arnold, January 1935 God’s RevolutionWhat does Jesus tell us? Show your love to those who represent the government. You are not to take revenge but to meet the authorities with love. Then too, pray for the government. (1 Tim. 2:1–2) It is utterly different from the Body of Christ, but it too serves God, though in a completely different sphere. The authorities are necessary; crime could not be kept under any kind of control without them. So you should recognize government authority but not become part of it. You are members of Christ, and Christ specifically rejected becoming a ruler. When they wanted to make Him a king, He escaped. (John 6:15) And when the Tempter came to Him and said, “Here, I will give you all the kingdoms of the world,” He refused. (Matt. 4:8–10) But He treated the authorities with respect.
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We love the soil because God’s spirit spoke and created the earth, and because he called it out of its uncultivated natural state so that it might be cultivated by the communal work of human beings. We love physical work – the work of muscle and hand – and we love the craftsman’s art, in which the spirit guides the hand. In the way spirit and hand work together and through each other, we see the mystery of community. God – the creative Spirit – has formed nature, and he has entrusted the earth to us, his sons and daughters, as an inheritance but also as a task: our garden must become his garden, and our work must further his kingdom.
- Eberhard Arnold
In Jesus’ resurrected presence, the invisible kingdom of God has become visible reality. The word has taken shape, love has become real. Jesus showed what love meant. His word and life proved that love knows no bounds. Love halts at no barrier. It can never be silenced, no matter what circumstances make it seem impossible to practice it. Nothing is impossible for the faith that springs from the fire of love.
- Eberhard Arnold