“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” (Psalm 139:7-8)
In 1824, war broke out between Burma and Britain, and the Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson was seized as a suspected spy. The authorities threw him into the death prison at Ava, locked him in iron fetters, and held him there in heat, hunger, and filth for about a year and a half. His wife Ann walked to the prison with food and pleaded for his life while their work, their health, and their future hung by a thread. Few places on earth could have felt more abandoned than that cell.
In the middle of it, someone asked Judson about the mission’s prospects. He answered, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” There, a man in chains in a foreign prison, surrounded by enemies, declared that the presence and faithfulness of God reached past the walls and into a future he could not see.
Judson had found what Jacob found, what the psalmists sang, and what Paul proclaimed. There is a presence no distance can outrun, and no prison can shut out. Wherever your feet land and wherever your soul travels, in the day of trouble or the season of plenty, God is there. He was there for the saints of old. He is there in your present reality. And he is there at the destination you are moving toward. God is there.
Genesis 28:10-19a
The Lord Was in This Place
“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” (v. 16)
Jacob is a fugitive. He has cheated his brother, and now he runs for his life with a stone for a pillow and the open country for a bed. As he sleeps, he dreams of a ladder set on the earth, its top reaching heaven, the angels of God going up and down it, and the Lord standing above it. God renews the promise of land and offspring and blessing for all families, and adds a personal word: “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.” Jacob wakes and says, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” He names it Bethel, the house of God, the gate of heaven.
This is the first note of the song. The presence found Jacob on the run, in a place he assumed was empty, before he knew enough to look for it. God was there ahead of his awareness. The promise was not earned; it was given by grace to a man with nothing under his head but a rock. God is there with the wanderer, in the unlikely place, before we recognize him.
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Wherever I Go, You Are There
“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” (vv. 9-10)
What Jacob stumbled upon, the psalmist composes into a song. He traces every direction a person could run and finds God already waiting: the heights, the depths, the far side of the sea, the deep dark. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” The darkness itself shines like noon to God. Then the psalm pivots. The presence that knows every step becomes a presence the psalmist welcomes into the depths of his soul: “Search me, O God, and know my heart… and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Jacob met God in a place. The psalmist meets God in the heart, in the thoughts formed before they reach his tongue. God is there not only wherever your feet go but wherever your soul goes, into rooms with doors you would rather keep shut. And the prayer to be searched and led prepares the way for the next movement, where a heart pulled in two asks to be made whole.
Isaiah 44:6-8
The First and the Last
“I am the first and I am the last. There is no God but me.” (v. 6)
If God is there in every place, Isaiah tells us he is there in every time. The Lord, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, names himself the first and the last, the only God, the Rock, the One who can announce the future before it arrives. To a people tempted to fear, he says, “Do not be startled or afraid.” God who stands at the beginning and waits at the end holds the whole span in between.
Here, fear loses its grip. The One who is already there at your destination has told you how the story ends. Isaiah supplies the bedrock under the believer’s confidence. The God who is present everywhere is present in every season of time, from beginning to end.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Among the Weeds
“Let both grow together until the harvest.” (v. 30)
Jesus describes a field where an enemy has sown weeds among the wheat under cover of night. The servants want to pull the weeds out at once, and the owner tells them to wait, since pulling them now would uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. Then he explains the picture: the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the harvest is the end of the age, and on that day the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom.
This is the reality of God’s presence. He is there in the mixed field, patient, holding back the final sorting so that the wheat can reach full growth. We live among the weeds, in a world and often a church where good and harm grow side by side, and God is there with us in it, unhurried and watchful. The patience of the field is the patience of Isaiah’s God who already holds the future, and the shining at the harvest is the very thing Paul is about to call the revealing of the children of God.
Romans 8:12-25
Heirs of Glory
“You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!'” (v. 15)
Paul gathers the whole arc into one place. The presence that found Jacob on the road, that fills every corner of Psalm 139, that holds the first and the last in Isaiah, now lives inside the believer as the Spirit of adoption. The fugitive becomes a son. We cry “Abba, Father,” and the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. The present still holds suffering, and creation groans like a mother in labor, waiting for the children of God to be revealed. Yet the suffering of now barely registers beside the glory to come, and “in this hope we were saved.”
God is there in you, now, by the Spirit who makes you cry out to your Father. And he is there at the destination, when your body is redeemed, and creation itself is set free from its bondage to sin and death. The shining of Matthew’s harvest is found in this revealing. The future Isaiah’s God declared is this glory. The presence Jacob met under the open sky is now the Father whose name is on our lips.
God is There
Jacob saw a ladder joining heaven and earth and called the place the gate of heaven. Years later Jesus told Nathanael, “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51). Christ is the ladder Jacob saw. He is the meeting place of heaven and earth, the gate of heaven in person, Immanuel, God with us.
And he made the promise sure by going to the one place where the Father’s presence was withdrawn from him. On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He bore that forsakenness in our place so that the word spoken over Jacob would hold over us in every location and every condition: “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.” Because Christ was forsaken once, God is there for us in all things. The Spirit of adoption then carries that promise inside us, so that the God who is there becomes the Father we cry out to, and he waits for us at the end, where the children of God are revealed and the righteous shine like the sun.
So how do you live as someone the presence has found? Begin where Jacob ended. You may be in a hard place this week, a prison of one kind or another, and not yet see that God is there. Say it before you realize it: the Lord is in this place. Name the place you are in, and look for him there. Then pray Psalm 139, asking God to search you and to give you an undivided heart, since the presence that knows you fully is the presence that heals a heart pulled in two. Model the patience Jesus showed in the field. Live among the weeds without appointing yourself the reaper, and leave the sorting to God while you tend your own wheat. Wait in hope, because the future is as bright as the promises of God, and the One who is first and last has already declared the end. And carry the presence to others. Jesus walked through the world as a living Bethel, the place where people met the God who is always there. Be a Bethel for someone this week.
Wherever your feet land, wherever your soul travels, surrounded by enemies or resting in plenty, God is there. He was there for the saints of old. He is there in your present reality. He is there at the destination you are moving toward. God is there.
Points to Ponder
- Jacob said, “The Lord was in this place, and I knew it not.” Where might God have been present in a season you remember as empty?
- The psalmist found God in the heights, the depths, and the dark. Which of those three is the hardest for you to believe God is present in right now?
- Jesus tells the servants to let the wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest. Where are you tempted to take up the reaper’s job, and what would it mean to leave the sorting to God?
- Paul says creation groans like a mother in labor. How does naming your own groaning as labor, with something coming, change the way you carry it?
- Christ was forsaken so that you would always be held. How does the cross make the promise “God is with you wherever you go” sure rather than wishful?
- Jesus was a place where people met God. Who in your life needs you to be a Bethel this week?
A Prayer
Father, before Jacob knew you were near, you were there, keeping him. We thank you that your hand reaches us in every height and depth and darkness, and that no distance and no prison can shut out your presence. We confess that we have run as though we could leave you behind, and we have let our hearts divide. Search us, and give us an undivided heart to fear your name. We thank you that your Son is the ladder joining heaven and earth, that he is Immanuel, and that he was forsaken on the cross so that we would always be in your presence. Send your Spirit of adoption into our hearts, that we may cry “Abba, Father,” and walk as your children among the weeds with patience. Steady us in the day of trouble, and lift our eyes to the day when the children of God are revealed and the righteous shine like the sun. The future is as bright as your promises. Wherever our feet land and wherever our souls travel, you are there. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:43)
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