My name is Drake…  Symon Drake.  I’m a descendant of Sir Francis Drake.  Actually a descendant of one of his brothers, as he never had children.  I’ve tracked my direct ancestry back to the 1700s so there is a bit of a gap to get back to Francis – but his name has been in our family for hundreds of years, and one day hopefully the blanks will be filled in.

Anyway – I didn’t even know Sir Francis was a man of faith until today, when I heard a prayer of his.

A brief history lesson:

Francis Drake was an adventurer and essentially a legal pirate (hero of the English, arch-villain of the Spaniards).  He wrote this prayer as he departed Portsmouth to raid Spanish gold on the west coast of South America.  He eventually returned to England (the long way – via circumnavigation) with loot worth over a half million pounds sterling, and received his Knighthood for it.

Sir Francis Drake’s Prayer (1577)

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.Pretty awesome great great great+ uncle if you ask me ;-)