"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . ." (2

More than a little of the blithesomeness of the first Christians leaves its make on this verse. A people accustomed to imagining God as ego-maniacal, capricious, ruthless--just like so many rulers in the ancient world--must have discovered immense surprise, relief, gratitude, comfort and hope in the realization that Jesus was the Son of God; that God was like Jesus. How wonderful for us that they left a record of their encounter with him so that we could share in the same glad realization.