August 3, 2025
God Was in This Place, and I Did Not Know It
Genesis 28:10-17
We’re continuing our sermon series on the favorite hymns of this congregation. Hymns are an important part of our faith. They teach us theology. They give us language to pray and praise. They express faith in ways that are both personal and corporate.
Some hymns have been the focus of our preaching; others have simply been sung in worship. One of my personal favorites is one we will sing today at the close of the service: “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”. That hymn has been in my heart and on my lips when I’ve gone through difficult things: “Open now the crystal fountain, whence the healing streams doth flow…” Most of the hymns shared by our congregation fell into one of two categories: hymns of praise and adoration—”All Creatures of Our God and King,” “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “Crown Him with Many Crowns”—or hymns of mission and justice—”Will You Come and Follow Me,” “Here I Am, Lord,” “God of Grace and God of Glory.”
But there were a few hymns that reflected a third category: songs of personal piety. Songs that speak to a personal relationship with God, like “Be Thou My Vision.” And the hymn that is the focus of today’s sermon: “Nearer My God to Thee.”
I want to reflect with you today on the experiences of our lives in which God draws near to us. Here’s an interesting fact: “Nearer My God to Thee” is not in our current Presbyterian hymnal, nor was it in the one before that. I’m not sure why. It was, actually, in Presbyterian hymnals a hundred years ago, and is today in some Baptist and Methodist songbooks. Some of us know this hymn from our childhood, or heard it sung to us by our parents or grandparents.
Others actually know this song from popular culture. You might know it only from the movie Titanic, when the band plays it as the ship is going down and people hear it in the lifeboats. That’s probably a true story. The band director on the ship loved the hymn and had wanted it played at his funeral. So, realizing what was happening, he instructed the band to play that hymn in those final moments.
The text of “Nearer My God to Thee” was written in 1841 by Sarah Flower Adams at her home in England. That date is interesting for our congregation, because 1841 was the year First Presbyterian Asheville finally got itself organized for good. Our church has its origins in 1794, but there were a lot of ups and downs, and it wasn’t until 1841, after the congregation was meeting on Church Street, that it reorganized and began to grow.
In that same year, across the ocean, Sarah Adams wrote this hymn. She was a gifted poet and
writer surrounded by political activism. Her father had been the editor of a radical newspaper.
Her husband was an engineer and activist. Her minister fought for the rights of women and freedom of the press, he ran a magazine for which Adams wrote regularly, and eventually left the ministry to serve in Parliament.
He was preaching one week on the story from Genesis about Jacob encountering God in a dream, and he needed a new hymn. So, Adams wrote this text, which is a poetic retelling of the story from Genesis. What she created was more than just a hymn—it was a profound meditation on finding God in the wilderness of uncertainty.
In the background of this Genesis story, Jacob is fleeing for his life. He has connived with his mother to steal his brother Esau’s birthright—his inheritance—from his father. It’s a blessing, and once it’s given, it can’t be taken back. Esau was furious and threatened to kill Jacob.
So Jacob left, traveling to another country, to find a wife and start a family and save his life. The future did not seem bright for him. He had made a major mess of his family relationships and was at one of his lowest points.
On the road to Haran, Jacob laid down to sleep, placing his head on a stone for a pillow. He was camping rough in the wilderness. And there, in that ordinary place, he had an extraordinary dream.
This is what we know as Jacob’s ladder, though “ladder” is not a good translation. It was more like a staircase—the kind you might imagine on the side of an ancient temple. Messengers of God were ascending and descending that staircase. That’s the part of the dream that grabs our imagination, but it’s actually not the key part of the dream.
The key part of the dream is that the Lord stood above the staircase and spoke words of promise and blessing directly to Jacob. God didn’t send a messenger. God didn’t speak through an intermediary. God spoke personally to this young man who was running from his mistakes. This is the key theological point of this story: God appears in an ordinary place, not an extraordinary place. Not in a temple or a sanctuary, but beside a wilderness road with a stone for a pillow.
When Jacob woke up, he recognized the significance of this dream, this promise, this encounter with God. His words capture the wonder of his discovery: “Surely the Lord was in this place, and I did not know it.”
Where are those places in our lives where ”God is there, and I did not know it”? Where does God draw us closer, often without our recognizing it at the time?
I recently read the book Discipleship for Every Stage of Life by Chris Kiesling, a professor at Abilene Christian University. I liked it so much, I gave it to our staff to read. Kiesling has pulled together insights from faith formation and developmental psychology to illuminate how faith grows and develops at each stage of a person’s life. He charts the spiritual work that accompanies our physical and emotional growth. His insights will actually inform our children’s and youth ministries this year, and some of our adult education and worship series.
When it comes to adults, let me share three key stages where we’re particularly likely to miss God’s presence, even though God is powerfully at work.
In young adult life, the spiritual work we do is to develop the script for our lives. We begin to develop the narrative of who we are going to be: work with hands or in office, big city or small town, start a family, what are my values, what lifestyle do I aspire to. Our culture gives us countless stories of what a good life looks like, through shows, movies, social media. And our faith tells us a story of what the good life looks like. Our faith teaches us that a good life is shaped by God’s blessing and takes the shape of gratitude and generosity and service.
Throughout young adulthood, as we are writing this script, we may miss the ways God is working in our lives, planting seeds for the future.
I’m standing here today because when I graduated from college, I was invited on a church tour by the pastor I had been working for during college. On that bus trip to New York City, I met a pastor who served outside of Washington, DC. He saw potential in me and invited me to come work at his church. From there began my path into ministry, into the Presbyterian church, and eventually here to Asheville.
God was there on that bus, but I did not know it. I thought I was just taking a free trip to New York City.
Maybe you look at your life and see similar patterns. As you were developing your career, your family, your values—as you were writing the story of your life—God was planting seeds, opening doors, putting people in your path, shaping the person you have become. God was there, but you didn’t know it.
In middle adult life, the spiritual work is to develop practices that sustain our souls. Middle adulthood is a time of great pressure. These are often our most productive work years. Children are growing with new and bigger needs. Parents are often growing older with new and different needs. We ourselves are changing. Our personal lives and our close relationships—friendships and marriages—often need renewal.
It’s a time of life when everything needs attention and everyone needs us. The spiritual work of this season is to develop practices that can sustain our lives, our souls—practices where we can meet God in the midst of ordinary responsibilities.
Sabbath is one such practice. A day of rest, increasingly hard in our ever-connected culture. A day of recreation, of worship, of friendships, of celebration, of attentiveness to our own lives and the people closest to us.
Solitude is another. Learning to do what Jesus did: “withdraw to a quiet place.” To be alone, and thus to be deeply with ourselves, in touch with our thoughts and feelings and experiences. To be in touch with God, who is closer than breath.
Hospitality is yet another. Making room. Room for others. Room for strangers. Room for new friends. Room for the unexpected. Creating space where God’s love can be experienced through human connection.
In the rush of middle adulthood, God draws us nearer though these ordinary practices, these stone-pillow moments of daily life. But we may not recognize it until much later.
In late adult life, the spiritual work we must do is to learn to let go with hope. As we grow older, we must learn the art of relinquishment. Sounds discouraging, but it is the work we have to do. We let go of our careers, which may have defined us. Sometimes we let go of places that we loved, as we move for a new chapter—homes and towns that held decades of memories.
Eventually, we let go of our children as their lives get busy. We welcome grandchildren, but as they grow, we must let them go too. As health changes, we let go of activities—the voice can’t sing anymore, the eyes can’t see to read like before, the hands don’t work the same way. Memory fades and the body fails. Overtime, we say goodbye to friends, siblings, spouses.
In the midst of this letting go, it can be easy to miss God’s presence and God’s promise. It can be easy to miss that God walks with us through each step. That God’s mercies will be new every morning. Even though we must let go, our invitation is to a deeper trust that God will not let us go.
And the invitation through every loss is to let go with hope. Every time we must let go, is an invitation to a deeper hope that the very best still lies ahead. Instead of seeing our lives as a curve where the peak is behind us, we’re invited to see our lives as a journey where the best is yet to come. The greatest joy, love, community, and peace lie ahead of us, by God’s promise, in God’s promised future.
The spiritual work of later life is to live with gratitude for our lives and growing trust in God for our future. To discover, like Jacob, that God was there all along.
When Jacob woke up from his dream, he named the place where he was sleeping “Bethel”—House of God. “Surely the Lord is in this place,” he said, “and I did not know it.”
Jesus inaugurated a new age where, by the grace of God’s Spirit, the house of God is not a building or a place, but a person. You. You are a temple of God’s Spirit.
At every stage of our lives, God draws closer. In the anxious script-writing of young adulthood, in the demanding stages of middle age, in the necessary relinquishments of later life—God draws us closer.
May God draw you closer today. And may you and I say with Jacob, with growing wonder and gratitude: “God was there, and I did not know it.”
Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina