Met with Mercy

I was met with mercy.  And so sings the entire Christian  community with every new day.  “I was met with mercy” – when my heart was hardened against God, when I was following my own path of sin, when I loved my sin more than I loved God, when my sin had led me into sorrow and misery, when I had gone astray and couldn’t find the way back – it was then that I was struck by God’s Word, and I heard:  God loves me.  It was then that Jesus found me; he was with me – he, and he alone – he comforted me and forgave all my sins, imputing none of my evil to me.  “I was met with mercy.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ’s Love and Our Enemies – A Sermon, 23rd January 1938