Nearer, My God, To Thee
Nearer, My God, to Thee
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.
There let the way appear steps unto heav’n;
All that Thou sendest me in mercy giv’n;
Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.
Then, with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise;
So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.
Or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I fly,
Still all my song shall be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.
SARAH ADAMS had to say farewell often, but she never liked it. Her mother had died when Sarah was only five—that was her first farewell. At thirty-two, as an actress playing Lady Macbeth in London’s Richmond Theater, she said farewell to the stage. She wanted to continue, but her health was failing. The health of her sister was also poor, and Adams feared the day when she would have to bid her farewell. She began to question her faith. Why did God seem so far away?
When Adams’s pastor asked her and her sister to help him prepare a hymnal, the two responded eagerly, writing thirteen texts and sixty-two new tunes. As the sisters were finishing their work, their pastor mentioned that he was planning a sermon about Jacob’s dream of a ladder ascending to heaven and he needed an appropriate hymn. Adams soon completed the five stanzas of “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway. . . . He named that place Bethel (which means “house of God”).
Genesis 28:11-12, 19
From the book
