Metamorphosis

The annual motto for 2021 is: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful"(Luke 6:36). The measure of our mercy should therefore be the mercy of the Father. And God, our Father, is enormously merciful (e.g. Psalm 103:8). An excessive demand!?

• Of course, when I look at my modest possibilities.
• Of course notwhen I look at God's possibilities!

In Romans 12:2, the Greek text has the word metamorphosis in a grammatical form, so that the correct translation is "Let your being be transformed"is. With the same miraculous power with which a chrysalis becomes a butterfly, God transforms us in our being. But beware: this does not happen bypassing our will. It is an imperative passive. We must will! How does this work? By holding out our hearts to God, spending time in God's potter's workshop and allowing ourselves to be moulded, looking at him - and in all this we are transformed in our being into the image of God. In the new year, we will be travelling with the annual theme "Metamorphosis" and will be intensively concerned with such transformation processes towards God's mercy.

Martin Luther gives us an application for today. The following quote from 1527 could not be more topical:

"When God sends deadly plagues, I will ask God to be merciful and to ward off the plague. Then I will smoke and ventilate the house, give and take medicine, avoid places where I am not needed, so that I do not poison and infect others and become a cause of death to them through my negligence. But if my neighbour needs me, I will avoid neither place nor person. Behold, this is a godly faith, which is not foolhardy and stupid and bold, and tempts not God.." (Luther's Work Volume 5, page 334f.)

It is worthwhile, especially at this time, when many people are insecure and quite a few are struggling with depression, to consider what mercy could mean. Thank you, Martin Luther, for your highly topical impulses!