Genesis 12:1-4 tells of God appearing to Abram and saying, “Pack up, leave your family and go until I say stop.”

Now that is asking a lot of anybody. Abram might at least have asked if he’d need rubber boots.

Abram, later to become Abraham, sets out and the story begins of two religions, Judaism and Islam (three, if you count that offshoot of the Jews, Christians). Without Abraham’s willingness to ‘set out’ the world would be a very different place today. St. Paul would make a major theme of Abraham’s obedience about 1500 years a Genesis 12:1-4 tells of God appearing to Abram and saying, “Pack up, leave your family and go until I say stop.”fter the event. But for me what strikes is the whole notion of setting out and knowing nothing about what you’re going to.

Jane, my first wife and Nancy’s big sister, had studied missions in Africa and wanted to be a missionary. I hadn’t studied about Africa unless you count the matinee double headers with Tarzan films as one of them. And I knew more about what Africa was than Abraham knew about Canaan, enough to know Tarzan wasn’t likely to be found. I also knew that my other alternative after seminary, work in the inner city of Chicago, would entail learning a language (Latinos were arriving in the melting pot every day). So Jane made it sound simple. “If you’re going to learn a language anyway…” The upshot was of course that I married her and we went to South Africa.

I say I knew Africa wasn’t men in pith helmets and damsels in jungle distress. In twenty eight years I was never once in a jungle like the ones in Tarzan movies and I learned two African languages, worked in three countries at eight very different jobs, and over a distance of about 2000 miles found beautiful grasslands, cities and towns and wonderful people wherever I went. But the only jungle I saw was when, within sight of the great Victoria Falls I walked in the rain forest the spray created.

One of the themes for Lent this year is a call to listen for God’s call. Another is to venture out of our personal comfort zones at God’s call. I was astonished when I arrived in South Africa in 1957 to find a city just like the one I’d left behind, as I thought, forever. The first shock was discovering far away places aren’t all that different! But the next surprise came when I began to see the different ways of solving humanity’s problems of those among whom I was working.

So don’t be fearful of going where you haven’t been if you get the call. You’ll probably be surprised that the new place is so much like where you’ve always been. And don’t be too shocked when you dig beneath the surface and discover creative and different ways of life that enrich your understanding and challenge you to growth.

-Dick Sales