Psalm 103

Praise the Lord, O my soul;

All my inmost being, praise His holy name.

Praise the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not all His benefits.

He forgives all my sins

and heals all my diseases;

he redeems my life from the pit

and crowns me with love and compassion.

He satisfies my desires with good things,

so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The Lord works righteousness

and justice for all the oppressed.

He made known His ways to Moses,

his deeds to the people of Israel....

...as far as the east is from the west,

so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children,

so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

This is the faith of Israel, that which they believed and trusted, based on their experience as a people, as a nation redeemed from slavery by the hand of the Almighty.  No other nation was drawn out of bondage by such mighty deeds; nothing like this was ever foretold by the wise men of any other peoples.  Jesus was to say, "You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews (Jn. 4:22).

Jesus came to reveal to us the Face of God, so that we would know what we worship, so that we would not have to imagine or to make up our own ideas of who or what God is.  He inherited in the flesh the entire experience of the Jewish nation, and He did not negate or deny their history or their beliefs.  In fact, He brought to perfection all they believed about the Father, making it even more personal than they had dared to imagine:  I do not say that I will ask the Father on your behalf.  No, the Father himself loves you ...(Jn. 19:26-27).

Was Jesus wrong when He said the Father Himself loves us?  Were the Jews wrong to believe they had been redeemed by an Act of God?  Was Abraham wrong to have left his people and his father's house to follow the guidance of Yahweh?  Was Moses wrong in leaving the desert at the command of the Voice from the burning bush?  Were the Israelites wrong in trusting God to lead them through the wilderness to the Promised Land?  Were the Apostles wrong in laying down their lives in testimony to the faithfulness of God?  Have all the saints from the time of the Apostles been wrong in their faith in God as a Person Who Loves and who sheds His own love throughout the world in the hearts of those who know Him? 

If God is not a Person, He cannot speak, and thus He has not spoken the untold universes into existence.  Nor has He spoken to Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, the Jews, Jesus, and to the saints.  If God is not a Person, to whom do we pray when our children are ill, when hope has left us, when we need direction and guidance.  If He does not "hear the cry of the poor," then all hope is lost, and our faith is in vain.  We are among all men, to be the most pitied, for we live in delusion and despair.  If God is not a person, in whose Image and Likeness are we made?

This is my faith; this is my testimony.  For this, I would give my life.