"Disturb us, Lord" (The Prayer of Francis Drake, Navigator and Sea Warrior)

Francis Drake (1540?-1596) was a great English captain, navigator, and sea warrior. He is known for circumnavigating the entire earth, and his role in defeating the Spanish Armada.

In 1577 he delivered the following prayer:

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.

(some versions I've read don't include the last two lines)

photo credit (statue):
Plymouth Drake
© Querido / Wikimedia Commons (GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2)Retrieved January 17, 2015 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plymouth_Drake.jpg

we have cropped the original version