Eberhard Arnold published most of his essays during his lifetime, but almost none of his poems. It might have been shyness: many are love poems, and others reveal private struggles. But if they open a window on a man’s inmost thoughts, they also show him at his most essential and Christ-centered.

A few days after Eberhard’s death, his wife Emmy approached a neighbor with a folder of his unpublished poems in hand: “They are not mine anymore…I want to share them.” Belated as it might be, this volume is a fruit of her generosity.