Disturb Us, Lord

 If you've ever attended a writers' conference, you can relate to the feeling you get when it's over. It's a mix between being overwhelmed, excited, pumped up, exhausted, challenged, and inspired... all rolled into one crazy, energetic little ball. Yep, that's me right now.

Processing all the information I took in this weekend at the Indy Christian Writers Conference may take days, weeks even, but I'll try to share bits and pieces here on my blog as I work through it. Tonight, though, I wanted to share one of the amazing prayers presented by Safiyah Fosua in her workshop titled, "Borrowed Words," which explored the importance of writing out our prayers.

The beauty and poignant message of this prayer, along with many others Safiyah presented, struck my heart. As present day Americans, we often talk about "getting out of our comfort zones." The author, British explorer and adventurer Sir Francis Drake, must have felt a similar way as he penned this prayer when he departed on an expedition in 1577:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we 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 effort 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 wilder 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.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,

Who is Jesus Christ.