I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a convert from being an active member of the Catholic church in 2017 at the age of 35. The prompting from the Spirit that began my investigating the Church was to read the Book of Mormon. There are so many incredible chapters, verses, lines, and phrases in The Book of Mormon that have built my testimony, strengthened my faith, and have edified and tutored me by the Spirit. What I have read in The Book of Mormon has made it possible for me to set myself on the covenant path. When I look back and think about what I have gleaned from this marvelous book, there is one line within one verse that has been the summum bonum of the whole book for me, and that is 2 Nephi 11:7:

“But there is a God, and he is Christ.”

This is the line that all of my trust and all of my hope, with its buoyant flowing white wings, hangs upon. “There IS a God. And He is Christ.”
In mortality, there is heartbreak, and loss, and separation from loved ones, and calamities, and tragedies and illness; inequity, unfairness, sinfulness, and evil. There is commotion. There is the trying of our faith and the proving of our souls herewith. In the lone and dreary world we can feel a terminal quality to our sorrows– the final word, in Him, seeming to be an eternity away–an ineffable and inconceivable speck of time at the end of the long inescapable tunnel of our pain. How do we know how it will all turn out? What do we do with the broken pieces of ourselves and our lives and our losses that seem to have no inkling of hope to be reversed, reclaimed, or redeemed? Is there really a God? Does He really see me? Does He really see us? Does He see the decimating grief of war? Does he see the earth-shattering injustice of the suffering of His children–especially those who are actually children–on this earth?

“There is a God. And He is Christ.” These words. My heart clings to them. These words reveal to me two things. The first, there IS, in fact, a Supreme Creator. There is someone at the top. There is someone who sees it all. There IS an executive party to the tempest below. There is someone to look to. There is a place–a person–where the buck stops and where the pain lands. Our suffering doesn’t echo into the void. There is witness to our woe. And while there is humanity, with its fragile mortal frame prone to disease and decay, and the natural man responsible for the misuse of its own agency, there is a Being who is aware of the entirety of the immeasurable Universe.

The second line is my favorite part. It reveals just WHO this God is. His name, Christ, reveals His character and His nature to me. This God isn’t just an impartial leader as large as the universe itself ready to subject us each to arbitrary whim or worse, no whim at all -just an indifferent party to a chaos model of creation. No. this God is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. This God IS the Good News. This God is the Light in the darkness. This God is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This God is Emmanuel, “God with us”[1]. This God is the thrill of hope. This God is with us. He is in our story. He isn’t hovering above, an uninterested bystander leaving us to our own devices, completely apathetic to our doings and our happenings. He is beside us, in every detail. He is in every joy and every sorrow. He lends us our very breath[2]. He has promised us the yoke[3]. He offers us salvation from spiritual death and eternal life. He is the condescension of God and also IS God. He reveals our Heavenly Parents’ nature and attributes to us through His behavior and words during His earthly ministry. He is our Exemplar, modeling the characteristics and qualities that make Him perfect. We know that while following Him will not give us easy lives or free from troubles, it WILL bring us true joy and happiness. We know this because we know Him. We know Him, because of this blessed book as another testament of Him.

These two lines are why the Book of Mormon exists at all, to help us to know and convince us all of the fact that Jesus is the Christ. The words, “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ”[4] shall be fulfilled as every human being on this earth receives this knowledge and feels its truth. I cannot think of anything better as a human being to know that there IS a God, that He loves us, that He is championing us through this mortal sojourn with all of its joys and sorrows, AND offers us salvation from spiritual death and eternal life with Him and with those whom we love most.

As this truth resounded in my heart and caused me to follow the Savior into the waters of baptism and make my first covenant with Him, and later to make and keep sacred covenants with Him through the temple, it rings today. It burns in my heart. It keeps me clinging to my covenants. It keeps me repenting each night at the end of the day, speaking to this loving witness only a whisper away, partaking of the opportunity to be washed clean. His sacred and holy name, He who is full of grace and truth, I sing His praises on my lips unceasingly. I sing the song of Redeeming love[5].

Why?

Because there IS a God. And his name is Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah.

[1] Matthew 1:23, see also Isaiah 7:14, 2 Nephi 17:14
[2] Mosiah 2:21
[3] Matthew 11:29-30
[4] Philippians 2:10-11
[5] Alma 5:9; see also 5:26