Stopping and Going

Stopping is a difficult discipline.

Resting is also a difficult discipline.

I live an unsustainable life. God is making that clear. I'm like a fusion of the Tortoise and the Hare.

In that classic Aesop's fable, the Tortoise and the Hare have a race which the hare knows he can't lose. So every time he loses sight of the tortoise he takes a nap. But because he is lazy, the tortoise, who has been steadily plodding along the entire time wins! The moral? Slow and steady wins the race. Eugene Peterson alludes to a similar reality in his book title, "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" where he challenges believers to have the long term view of discipleship and growth.

This is a great message! Unless, of course, you are me... because it then becomes "slow and steady wins the race" and "speedily never stopping must be even better"! And so I find myself living a frenetic life that never... stops. Until I crash that is! ;)

Both images are flawed if applied to our spiritual growth, I feel. One (the Hare) ascribes to a sprint methodology, living off of spiritual highs, a roller-coaster faith that is always wildly swinging between extremes. The other (the Tortoise) plods forward, driven by the need for sanctification, but making no space to stop, to rest, ultimately crashing, like the hare, only later and harder.

What is a better image for the appropriate rhythms of life, that neither fall into a "hare-like" sprinting and crashing or a "tortoise-like" driven-ness?

Thoughts?