Maggi Dawn quotes part of the prayer of Sir Francis Drake. I like the word disturb even if I usually resent the experience – but now and again, and more often than not, we all need the experience of being disturbed.
I want to be attracted more to risk than safety, to prefer trust to certainty, to question reality with a little dreaming – and yes, to see if when push comes to shove, I talk a better faith than I live – or live a better faith than I talk. Pentecost is getting nearer – and amongst the ministries of the Holy Spirit is the power to disturb. The great liturgical invocation, "Veni Sanctus Spiritus", is not a prayer for protective peace but for faith to take risks! With aplogies to Latin purists, it could be re-written with one added word
"Veni Spiritus Sanctus, Disturbus!
Remove from our souls – complacency – predictability – routine – defensiveness – laziness – ennui – comfort – familiarity – mediocrity – the whole lexicon of undisturbed tedium, from apathy to zonkedness." (by the way this word is in MY lexicon, cos I couldn’t think of another).
So the prayer of Sir Francis (not St Francis – whose prayer is also disturbing but in a different way) is one I want to pray for my own life and its next stages, for the faith community to which I belong (Scottish Baptists), and for the Church in our country. Not moribund peace but creative hassle; not the shoreline but the open sea; not the safe strategies of sensible safe religious behaviour, but the disturbing turbulence of following in the slipstream of the Spirit. Do I really mean this – well I’m praying it anyway, in the words of the world’s first circumnavigator, and if God answers it, God help me and us – as He has promised to do!
Disturb us, Lord,
when we are too well pleased with ourselves;
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little;
When we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.
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.
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