{"id":12468,"date":"2026-05-14T18:26:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/?p=12468"},"modified":"2026-05-22T19:54:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:54:49","slug":"to-go-out-with-good-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/to-go-out-with-good-courage\/","title":{"rendered":"To Go Out With Good Courage\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

O 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. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powerful and simple, these words have anchored generations as \u201cthe Holden Prayer\u201d–a beautiful invocation ubiquitous at the remote Holden Village retreat center in Washington State\u2019s Cascade mountains. My now college-aged niece used to regularly and charmingly intone this litany at a very young age, her solemn emphasis on the \u201cgood cou-wage\u201d we needed to remember and carry with us. Indeed, it\u2019s hard not<\/em> to \u201cgo out with good courage\u201d when the person entreating you to do so is a bright-eyed, earnest toddler clad in footed pajamas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned only recently that the prayer originated in the UK in 1941, penned by Eric Milner-White, then dean of King\u2019s College, Cambridge. Titled \u201cThe Call of Abraham,\u201d this supplication would have landed amid communities rocked by World War II and the bleak despair of the bombing raids. (The \u201cBlitz,\u201d or Luftwaffe campaign, reached its crescendo in that same year, in fact.) \u201cPerils unknown\u201d loomed large, and not as the evocatively crafted language of vague abstraction. How do you<\/em> put one foot in front of the other, in a time when assumed certainties suddenly collapse? When the way seems futile and the path not just untrodden but alarmingly uncertain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prayer serves as a reminder and a spur onward. While it does not minimize the very real precarity, neither does it allow such uncertainty to define the moment and or the larger truth. We are led, we are loved, and we are supported\u2026despite the contours of the journey and its possible destinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Lutheran pastor and writer Nancy Winder recounts, \u201cThe Call of Abraham\u201d was introduced to the broader US Lutheran community in 1958, when the president of Lutheran Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) incorporated the prayer into the 1958 Service Book and Hymnal<\/em>. In the \u201cCollects and Prayers\u201d of the SBH<\/em>, \u201cThe Call of Abraham\u201d found new life as \u201cFor Guidance,\u201d number 96.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prayer quickly became a standard when Holden Village launched; my husband\u2019s maternal grandparents, Carroll and Mary Hinderlie, invoked no. 96 regularly as Holden\u2019s first directors in the early 1960s. Over time and with such repeated use in the Village, the words became familiar in widening circles as \u201cthe Holden Prayer\u201d–reference to a treasured petition at a retreat center where thousands came for peace and renewal. We recite it frequently at Valparaiso University, most especially at baccalaureate and commencement ceremonies, where we pray for and with our graduating seniors as they \u201cgo out with good courage\u201d from this place toward the next adventures on their journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not unlike Holden Village, Valparaiso University serves as a place that people (and particularly students) are always coming to and departing from. It\u2019s a community where we sojourn, learning and exploring both richly and well\u2013as we determine how best to learn, explore, serve, and take the next, faithful step in the wider, beckoning world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many people (including Valpo students and Holden folks) have taken this prayer with them, and praying it has become part of their everyday lives. My family is no different. Indeed, the Holden Prayer has become an almost nightly prayer we say with our children\u2026which is a little humbling if you think about it. (Apparently the Graber-Stewart family never really knows exactly where we\u2019re headed, because those words seem to ring true regardless of when we say them!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtually the whole of the prayer is about uncertainty, about traveling without a map, and about what it takes to go out anyway<\/em>. The certainty meets us at the beginning and the end, with God. God calls us together, and individually, to be servants, to travel amid the uncertainty of the middle of the prayer, with a faith that there is a hand that leads, a heart that holds, and a helper who attends us no matter the road we travel or the turns we take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a gift there is in that promise\u2013perhaps some glimmer of a graduation gift. A poem for the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we know, moreover, that we carry not only that prayerful promise with us, but also the inherent truth of our God-given good-ness, our enough-ness, in a world where it can sometimes be difficult to remember the abundance of grace always surrounding us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A favorite writer of mine, Barbara Brown Taylor muses on this poignantly in Gospel Medicine<\/em>. She remarks on our very human tendency to feel like we must earn, or achieve, or live up to some never-quite-defined standard. If we are going out in the world and doing this or that, we assume, and if we\u2019re really and truly called, then surely we must need to hit some vocational mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riffing on Isaiah 49, Brown Taylor proffers an antidote, a dose of \u201cgospel medicine\u201d to guard against that infectious lie we often tell ourselves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if the real measure of our extraordinariness is not our thoughtfulness or our friendliness or our busyness but our spark? What if the real sign of our witness to the light is not how much we accomplish but our own lightness, our own reflection of the bright God who has chosen us and lit us up and sent us into the world like candles into a dark room? (161)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have been called for and toward something greater than only a professional commitment or another course of study or whatever equally valid responsibilities you might hold. Those doubtless matter of course, but they do not wholly define and determine you. \u201cWhat you have been called to do,\u201d insists Brown Taylor, \u201cis to ignite, enflame, combust, burn, shine<\/em> with the glory of the God who has chosen you, and given you to the world, bright lights to the end of the earth\u201d (161).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we close the book on this academic year and as some of us cross that commencement stage in the ARC, graduating into new chapters and adventures, may we hold these truths close as parting gifts. While we fittingly celebrate our achievements, may we also remember that our lightness<\/em>, our reflection<\/em> of the Light, does not brighten or dim due to effort or accomplishment. Rather, humbly and with full hearts, may we have \u201cfaith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that [God\u2019s] hand is leading us and [God\u2019s] love supporting us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blessings on your next faithful steps and the journeys we all take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Dr. Anna Stewart
Director, Institute for Leadership and Service<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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