Disturb us, Lord
A few Romanian blogs (see Vasilica Croitor and Danut Manastireanu) picked up and translated a great prayer by Sir Francis Drake (1577). I like it a lot and I found it in English here. Here is the text:
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 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 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 back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.
Francis Drake,�an adventurer and essentially a legal pirate (What else�is a second son supposed to do to make a living?), wrote this prayer as he departed Portsmouth on the Golden Hind to raid Spanish gold on the west coast of South America. He ventured at least as far north as the non-Spanish parts of�California, claiming it as “New Albion” – New England- and returned to his Queen (the long way – via circumnavigation)�with loot worth over a half million pounds sterling, and received his Knighthood for it.
I hope you enjoy it too. Many (most of the?) times I do need to be disturbed by the Lord from my complacency.
Below is the Romanian version recited wonderfully by Emil Bartosh!
Look to the Rock
As I was jogging down the hill this morning (I crawled up in the first phase) I was listening to the great messages by Keller and Clowney on preaching Christ in a postmodern world. See more about these lectures (free to download) here .
Keller mentioned a very important book in one of his lectures by Alec Motyer: Look to the Rock: An Old Testament background to our understanding of Christ .
I was very excited when I heard about this book and I was getting ready to put it on my wishlist at Amazon. UNFORTUNATELY, even though the book is only about $10-15 dollars, it is out of stock everywhere (including at IVP), and the cheapest copy at Amazon is almost $350.00.
Thank God it is available at Google books . That is not my favorite was to read a book, but at least it is available.
I hope that I will find it soon in hard copy so I can buy it. From what Keller said in his lecture, it promises to be a great book for understanding the Old Testament background of Christ.
And I like the title too: Look to the Rock! AMEN!
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