“Disturb us Lord when we are too well pleased with ourselves.  When our dreams have come true because we’ve dreamed too little.  When we arrive safely because we’ve sailed too close to the shore.  Disturb us Lord when, in the abundance of the 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.  Lord, we ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes and to push us into the future in your strength, courage, hope, and love.  Disturb us, oh Lord.”

~ Sir Francis Drake

I just want to know I am right, and that I am not careening down a dead-end road that ends in a rather steep cliff.  I want the handwriting-on-the-walls-audible-voice-of-God-burning-bush-experience, complete with a carbon copy of all instructions via email for good measure.  I want certainty.  I want control.  I want to know exactly what I am getting into so that I can clearly and strategically decipher whether I have the ability to endure it.

I am lying to myself.  What I really want is to control the outcome, to avoid more pain and, therefore, opt out of any need to actually trust God.

Be still.  Trust.  Surrender.  Let go.

Yeah…those words feel like abrasive Brillo pads on my sensitive flesh.  And yet, if I will be still long enough, I can remember the numerous times of God’s faithfulness in my life–the mighty storms that revealed his greatness.  I can clearly see he is indeed trustworthy.  I understand that he alone will give me the strength to walk whatever lies before me.  It isn’t up to me, it isn’t about me, it has always been about him…and the story he is writing.

I can choose to trust him.  I can hold on to him desperately, moment by moment.  With my eyes clearly fixed on who he is, I am free to realize I have absolutely nothing to fear.  And so I climb into my rickety boat and venture out into wider seas, far past the illusion of comfort provided by the shoreline, and I wait.  I wait to see the stars.