Searching the Internet for a completly different thing I discovered a very interesting post. Peter Kline - a young theologian working in a Lutheran congregation in the USA without being Lutheran himself - speaks about why it still makes sense to study Martin Luther.

He is talking very much from within the US American culture. But since many of our communities are quite influenced by American culture it is still interesting to read if you are from a different part of the world.

His starting point is a quote by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote once that in the USA, there are Protestants but they have never gone through a Reformation. That seems paradox at first. Don’t we call those Christians Protestants who trace themselves back to the Reformation? But later it becomes clear: The US American Protestants are just doing church: They pray, they worship, they are having great social activities, they work for justice - but they have never gone through the depth of total dependence on God in Jesus Christ.

Exactly that is the experience Martin Luther keeps talking about: What do you do if you arrive at a point, where you cannot “do” anything anymore? What do you do when you cannot serve, believe, even hope anymore? Luther experienced this deep struggle, this feeling of despair. And in all this, he found God’s grace. He realized that God loves us and looks favorably on us is not dependent on what we do. It is not even dependent on what we are. It all flows out of God’s love to us. And we can experience God’s love by encountering Jesus Christ.

That is Martin Luther’s core message and it is the core message of the Reformation. It is highly relevant for me while I sit in my office at the end of the year and making plans for the year to come. The plans that we are making might work or might fail. But I can never fall deeper than into God’s hands.