A Quote That's Been Following Me Around

I never read the following poem until a few days ago when a friend emailed it to me. Just tonight I ran across it in a book I was finishing. So I must tack it to the blog for posterity's sake....

Disturb Us, Lord
- Attributed to 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.

"A life of risk will be intimidating/demanding/difficult/lonely/overwhelming/troublesome/uncomfortable. But serving God is worth the risk, because God is enough [italics mine]. It's better for us to risk something for which we are passionate about and fail than to never risk at all, because more important than safety is the pleasure of God." --JR Briggs, When God Says Jump