None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other hope in Heav’n or earth or sea,
None other hiding place from guilt and shame,
None beside Thee!

My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life, though I be dead;
Love’s fire Thou art, however cold I be:
Nor Heav’n have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but Thee. (Christina Rossetti)

There is a theme running throughout psalms and hymns, authors claiming that they have nothing besides Christ. I think that too often our reaction is to applaud these writers for releasing their hold on earthly things to cling solely to Christ. (Which is a good thing.) We treat the statement as a statement of faith rather than of fact.

It isn’t a statement of faith to claim only Christ; it is the reality in which we live, and move, and have our being. If you are perfect, or, at least, more perfect than I (which isn’t hard) this reality may hold no fears, no nagging uncertainty. Lucky you.

If I have nothing but Christ, then my relationship with and to Him is not just important it is of overmastering importance (to borrow a term from Dorothy Sayers). And I hear you, “No, duh, Sarah.” Hear me out. If all I have is Christ, than any rift in that relationship promises not only to undo my fellowship with Him it also threatens my relationship with reality (everything).

I’ve been pondering a verse brought up in a recent church Bible study. “Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things out of Thy law.” The premise of the verse is that alone I am unable to see what I ought to see in the Bible.

Studying the act of seeing in Scripture is illuminating. (Pun intended.) From almost the beginning man has had trouble seeing aright. Consider our first mother, Eve. She saw the fruit . . . it looked good and it looked like a thing that would unlock for her special knowledge reserved for God Himself. She saw. But she saw wrong. What she saw was not reality.

Or consider the servant of Elisha trapped with Elijah on top of hill surrounded by enemy soldiers. Two men against a host. But, again, what the servant saw was not reality. Elisha prayed and asked God to show his servant reality. And the servant’s eyes were opened to see the hosts of heaven protecting him. He was in no danger from the enemy.

So back to the original premise. “All I have is Christ” is statement of fact. It is not a comfortable fact. God declares His personality, His purpose, His power all over this world in every facet of nature, every event of history, and, of course, in the book He gave us. But in the end, as much as we know about God, we will never be able to know Him fully. Which means my understanding of reality will always be at least a little out of focus, and, to be honest, more often than not, much out of focus.

If you, like me, want a checklist-orderly, understandable world run by a comfortable, understandable God, you and I are out of luck. He is no tame lion. Our most rigorous attempts to bend His ways to our understanding will end in frustration and despair. Always. Why? Reality is Christ, and until I can see perfectly as Christ I have to accept that there is much I will have to take by faith and not by sight. It’s uncomfortable living with the knowledge that your knowledge and understanding will never be sufficient to rightly understand the world.

But be of good cheer. God remembers that we are pretty foolish blobs of dust — he knows us; He made us. And to help us along He gives us many words of wisdom and precious promises to guide our semi-blind wanderings.

I don’t know what pieces of reality, of Christ, are out of focus for you. Me? I’m struggling to trust that God will bring justice into situations in which people who should have known better behaved in decidedly unchristian ways. Or, perhaps, more specifically that God can afflict the righteous without malice — that all his ends will absolutely bring about God’s glory and good, great good, for His saints. I cannot understand why God is patient when I want Him to get busy hurling lightning bolts. (Though I admit to being very thankful He isn’t quick to hurl lightning bolts at me.) How can God stand by and watch his faithful servants be hurt?

I’m not the first to level this accusation at God. (See almost any book of the OT.) But I’ll admit I haven’t found a satisfying, here-and-now answer. All I find is —

The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. Nahum 1:3

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. Psalm 34:19-22

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9

Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! Psalms 46:10

I find in these and other verses a path for my semi-blind groping for reality. God is not now, nor has He ever been out of control. He is working everything after the counsel of His own will. He is palpably good. He does not change. He does not acquit the wicked. His love is everlasting. And that is enough. That is Christ — even when every fleshly bit of me thinks there ought to be more. Be still and know Christ. Be still and know reality.

I don’t know what you are struggling with. All you have is Christ — literally. For you and me the only answer is Christ.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down . . . (St. Patrick)