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There is an old poem, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. For poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree." There is much truth to this. Everything we do on our own strength ends up flawed and empty. It's a big mistake trying to find the value of your life by achieving things. That's why working for God's Love never works. The truth is: God is a poet. And you are His poem. As it is written in Ephesians, "We are His workmanship." In Greek the word for workmanship is "poi-ema," from which we get the word "poem."

Nothing you can do in your own strength can ever be as beautiful or as precious as who you are in God. In salvation, you are God's workmanship--- His poem. Stop struggling in your works and start learning how to be His work. Rest from your works, and rejoice in His works. You are the very poem of God. Get that right and your life will become beautiful poetry.

Western Europe was entirely Roman Cathoic before 1517

Well, not entirely. There were heretics. There were always heretics.

But they were heretics for a reason.

They were wrong.

That was put beautifully.

I have been a LCMS member my whole life. Every time there is a Luther thread, we always get bashed. Yet it was Christ's (and Luther's) desire that we quit fighting and turn to the Lord for our salvation. Luther, as a monk, knew that the common people did not know the Word of God. They did not, for the most part, speak Latin, and they had to rely heavily on the priest's interpretation of the Word.

Let me put it another way. Can any of you imagine a televangelist as the only person who understood the Bible, and you had to rely on him for the meaning of the Word?

Luther was human. God used him to make His Word known to the common people of Germany. It is God whom we should praise when we remember the reformation, not Luther. Luther wanted the focus on the Triune God and His plan for salvation.