Inviting God to Disturb us by Pastor Susan Fochler

Dear Family;

We recently spent some time in the Point Reyes area, where Sir Francis Drake made landfall in 1579 at Drakes Bay in Marin County.  I was struck by the prayer Sir Francis prayed as he was leaving England to make the second circumnavigation ever of the world. During a time when any travel by boat for any distance was very risky; long before GPS, satellites, cell phones, or gas-powered motors, Sir Francis recorded this remarkable prayer:



Disturb Us, Lord

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.

What Was Sir Francis Thinking?

I find it shocking that he would pray such a prayer at a time when there were none of the comforts or ease of transportation and communication as we find with todays rapidly expanding technology.  This prayer deals with an issue of our modern lives that can so lull us with it’s familiarity: the security of the known.  It is so easy to take what we have for granted.  Nothing was very safe or predictable 400 years ago in the day when Sir Francis lived.  Long before electricity, reliable transportation, medicine, communication, and safe food and water supply, he asked to be “disturbed” from playing it safe!  Clearly he was listening to a wooing from deep within, to step into an eternal destiny that was given to him by God alone.  Any other journey would never satisfy.  May we each so listen and respond to that deep calling unto the deep places in our own hearts!

Disturb us with Your Kingdom, Lord!

I propose that this prayer is an invitation to embrace the Kingdom of Heaven as that place that is not familiar, predictable or controllable.  Yet, how can we choose a lesser path?  We belong to the Lord of Heaven, we answer to a Higher King than the prince of this world.  His ways, His thoughts are so beyond, so much better than ours; yet, He invites us in, higher, to dream and imagine a world beyond this, where Faith is the entrance and Love is the currency.

We thank you, Lord, that through our Precious Jesus we are all “in” and qualified already!  You faced the worst discomfort imaginable so we could know unending belonging in You.  How could anything else of this world compare?  Give us eyes to see, and ears to hear the bounty of Your goodness and the very near reality of Your Kingdom as never before.  And give us the courage to enter in boldly, knowing we truly can trust You, the source of all Love, with all we hold dear.  Thank you, sweet Jesus, for choosing us first, to be Yours, forever.  You are our only safe place.

With Love,
Susan