God is forever calling us to go—“go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you,” go from what is comfortable and well-known, from where we have settled down and made peace with the status quo, from whatever is binding us in place, keeping us from moving deeper into our relationship with God. The Church provides the season of Lent as an opportunity for us to focus on God’s call to leave behind all that clouds our vision and separates us from our awareness of the steadfast love of God, of the presence of God in the here and now. We are called to cast aside all that wraps us in darkness and “return to [the Lord] with all our heart” (Joel 2:12) to experience God’s inexhaustible mercy. We are called to go out into the unknown, and that makes us nervous, apprehensive, knowing we may be vulnerable, not in control of what is there. We’ve heard the scripture stories of the difficulties that faced those who answered God’s call to go. Moses who had to go back into Egypt and confront Pharaoh; Samuel worrying about the sitting king when he answered God’s call to anoint David as God’s choice; Hosea called to marry a harlot in order to act out God’s prophecy; Paul undergoing all kinds of miseries as he responded to God’s call, yet we know all experienced untold blessing in their life with God. That blessing awaits us, when we respond to God’s call to go, trusting in the mystery that is ready with God’s transforming grace to prepare us for the Promised Land, the prodigal’s homecoming, the wedding feast, however we may image it in our hearts, in our language so insufficient for describing our experience of God. There’s an old gospel hymn that says, “Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.” (words by the Rev. Thomas Dorsey, music by George N. Allen) May that phrase be our theme song these next few weeks of Lent. When we finally are able, with wisdom and courage, to stretch out our hand into what William Johnston in his book entitled “Arise, My Love. . . “ calls “that ultimate and unutterable mystery that engulfs us,” we find God’s hand reaching out to clasp ours, drawing us ever closer into God’s bosom. The good news is that, no matter where we are called to go, we can trust, with the psalmist, that “The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time forth for evermore.”