The Inner Life and Public Life
The best thinkers often are best, too, at prayer wherein they gain the choicest insights. The burden for a nation expressed in prayer and thought needs also to be fulfilled in the act. So it was in the life of Eberhard Arnold (d. 1935) who led the Rhoen Bruderhof in Germany, and whose best-known work (the fifth German edition) was hidden, buried in metal boxes, from the Nazis before its publication in 1936. This morning’s words seem apt and are thus presented here:
Every great and deep experience must lead to the deepest self-examination. Then, from within, we will be equal to the onslaught of unaccustomed events. War is a challenge to inwardness in the sense of self-examination because the developments that lead up to war lead us further and further away from the roots of all strength. The increasing prosperity of any country and all the work that is achieved are significant outer blessings for which we cannot be thankful enough. But they lose their value entirely and turn immediately into a ruinous curse as soon as they begin, like a top-heavy load, to crush the inner life. With precipitous speed, we are being deprived of the inner blessing of our human calling by the outer blessing of our rapid development. Our public life has lost its human character; and inwardness has been damaged as a result of the rush and hurry of all the work there is to do on the one hand, and on the other hand by the luxury, excess, and feverishly accelerated pleasure-snatching that has become part of life.
He has more to say, of course, to bring a consistent message home: in the inner land of man’s soul where God dwells there is peace, strength, security. And so forth. You can read his entire book online, or download it for free at http://www.plough.com/ebooks/innerland.html