One day a kindly man ran after Luther and his friends with sausages in his hands. His intention was to give them the sausages, but Luther and his friends ran away in fear, certain that this real-life Hanswurst* somehow meant them harm. Luther used this as an illustration of how even when God reached out to us in love and grace, we are often so suffused with the idea of him as a stern judge bent on punishing us that we tragically shrink from his loving grasp, thus to our own sad detriment denying ourselves the very thing for which we long.
