Selling the family homestead can be a very traumatic experience for many. Usually itoccurs at the death of a parents or at least a move to a transitional lifestyle. It often is giving up a home where one grew up and letting go of many sentimental items. And we m=now become the senior generation.

In a very real sense this is what God is asking Abram to do in today’s first reading. “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and you father’s house to a land that I will show you”. God asks him to let go of all that he has been familiar with his whole life, and to set forth into an unknown future. God promises him he will make of him a great nation, a great name and he will be a blessing.

Abram already an old man without any children, yet God promises him that HE will be the father of many nations. All this on the word of a God that Abram alone knew. In the end the reading tells us that Abram went as he was directed and we know that he did indeed become the Father of the Jewish nation. All because he trusted God and let go of what he knew.

Even in the Gospel story today of the Transfiguration, the apostles are asked to let go of the partial knowledge of who Jesus was to them inorder to incorporate his divinity into that picture. They too are startles and fearful at first, but as they descend the mountain, they have let go and allowed God to become closer to them.

Lent is that time each year when God wants to draw us closer to Himself and He asks us to let go of those things in pour hearts that keep us from Him. Our worries , our anxieties, and our fears; our angers, our grudges and our hatred; whatever in our lives gets in the way of God drawing us closer. Lent is the time to look honestly at ourselves and to surrender ourselves more completely to God’s will in our lives.

Letting go and letting God act always leads to newer and greater life – and ultimately to the life of the resurrection.