Wherever God is, his kingdom – the final kingdom – draws near. He is the God of peace, whose presence brings freedom from all inner restlessness, all dividedness of heart, and every hostile impulse.… God wants to bestow an indestructible harmony upon our inner life: harmony that shows itself in mighty melodies of love. The energy born of inner gathering empowers. When hearts are gathered, people are gathered. Their industrious work shows that the kingdom of God is justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
- Eberhard Arnold
January 06,2025
- Eberhard Arnold Why We Live in CommunityWe 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.
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People have turned away from the clarity of Jesus, who challenged us to say either yes or no and not something in between. People turn from the way of Jesus, weakly accepting a paradoxical situation in relation to God; all they can say in their vanity is “yes and no” or “no and yes” simultaneously. We must fight against this. We were once challenged, “Surely you don’t want to wage a general campaign against all evil?” Yes, this is exactly what it is all about. That is why Jesus came into the world; he called us and sent us out to take up this campaign against all evil in all things. He came to destroy the works of the devil. “God is light and in him there is no darkness. ”
- Eberhard Arnold
It is clear to us that the first Christian community in Jerusalem was more than a historical happening. It was here that the Sermon on the Mount came to life.
- Eberhard Arnold