Lord God

you have called your servants

to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,

by paths as yet untrodden,

through perils unknown.

Give us faith to go out with good courage,

not knowing where we go,

but only that your hand is leading us

and your love supporting us;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

from the Lutheran Book of Worship

(Augsburg,1978)

This Lutheran prayer is perfect as we set out on another Lenten journey, especially as we do so in a world which seems uncertain in so many ways. Fears and anxieties caused by pandemic, environmental crisis and political instability, ripple ominously across the globe. Yet it is to serve this world that God has called us. And ‘called’ is the first word which the American composer J. Aaron McDermid (b.1974) chooses to highlight in the opening phrase of his lovely setting of this prayer. The voices lift as they sing it, suspended on the word so we cannot fail to notice it. But as well as shining a light on our calling, the first part of the prayer faces up squarely to the challenge of the task: its ending is unclear, the paths towards it ‘as yet untrodden’, traversing ‘perils unknown’.

Then, into all this unknowing, a soprano voice rises up, lone and clear. “Give us faith,” she sings – not once but twice, and the other voices start to gather around her, growing in energy, heartened by her cry for faith, by its implicit invitation to trust. The piece builds and builds until it is exultant in its confidence that however much is unknown, God’s loving, supporting presence cannot be doubted.

At last the singers quieten. They come back to earth, as it were, after glorying in God’s abiding. Grounded, settled and reassured, they close the prayer “through Jesus Christ our Lord”.