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Disturb Us, Lord
Sir Francis Drake
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst for the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back the horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future in strength, courage, hope and love.
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What a fitting prayer. What a great reminder that only in our discomfort can we grow to our potential.
Very relevant for our time. We need our vision of a new heaven renewed. Great poem! Thanks, Stephen, for your efforts to find inspiring Sunday poems.
Yes, the poem says it beautifully. We having been looking in the wrong direction…way too long in our beloved country. If we are to save her spirit, we must raise our sails and catch a fresh gust and valiantly head into the future…ready to face the challenges with eyes wide open!! We can’t just cave in because of this vile and dangerous financial calm which seeks to suck the marrow out of the life blood of this country (our God given entrepreneurial spirit). We must reinvent ourselves and make way for our children’s future too!
This poem was shared today at the Celtic Festival in Dayton, Ohio at the Gaelic Mass – so inspiring, one you just can’t walk away and forget. The priest said it was written by a pirate, but I’ve seen credit to Sir Frances Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh when looking it up online. I wonder who it really was written by? No matter, very thought-provoking.
Sir Francis Drake was a privateer, a pirate for all practical purposes, for a great portion of his life.