"I am the LORD, there is no other"

The words are simple and clear: set at the very beginning of today’s first reading (Isaiah 45:6b-8, 18, 21b-25) and repeated with even greater power.

For thus says the LORD,
The creator of the heavens,
who is God,
The designer and maker of the earth
who established it,
Not creating it to be a waste,
but designing it be lived in:
I am the LORD, and there is no other.

No other God exists: no other “Force” or mysterious principle of self-creation – nothing. The LORD is the Creator.

Who announced this from the beginning
and foretold it from of old?
Was it not I, the LORD,
besides whom there is no other God?
There is no just and saving God but me.

Human beings, of course, are finite in their knowledge, limited in their perceptions, and in many ways confused by the effects of sin in the world and in ourselves.

Thus different human beings may look at the world differently, with or without culpability: misreading the evidence of God’s existence and of God’s nature and misunderstanding God’s own self revelation (even His most perfect revelation in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ).

But this ignorance will not last forever.

Turn to me and be safe,
all you ends of the earth,
for I am God; there is no other!

By myself I swear,
uttering my just decree
and my unalterable word:
To me every knee shall bend;
by me every tongue shall swear,
Saying, “Only in the LORD
are just deeds and power.”

Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son of the only God, be merciful to me – a sinner.