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

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