Stopping Too Soon

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.  

Genesis 2:2

Both of my parents were born in the South.  Every summer until I was 13, our family would pile into my Dad's car and make the nearly 700 mile journey from Freeport, New York to South Carolina. Since my Mom didn't (and still doesn't) drive, my Father would drive the entire distance alone. As a result, he zealously avoided making any unnecessary stops. Our trips were planned with unerring efficiency.  My mother prepared fried chicken and bologna sandwiches in ziplock bags, and placed them in a red thermos along with some lemonade and pound cake to eat in the car along the way.  Even though the trip was 12-14 hours, most summers we left before dawn and a few hours after dusk we would be pulling up on the dirt road that led to Grandma Ophelia's house. My father didn't believe in making any unnecessary stops.   

All of these trips were taken before the advent of satellite radio, video games, social media or in car entertainment systems.  There was no Nintendo Switch to be had, so I am sure you can imagine the sheer boredom that attended our odysseys.  At some point (I don't remember when), I devised a variety of strategies to fight my boredom.  One of them was particularly effective.  Once you leave New York and enter New Jersey, you begin to hit long stretches of barren highway, and the distances between the exits become increasingly longer.  That's when I started seeing the "Rest Area signs."  The cool thing about the signs is that when you passed one, it would tell you how long it would be until you passed another.  My favorite game was to try to figure out how long I could count between the signs, and then what the average count time was by state.  Yes, I know, that's pretty nerdy.  But to a kid stuck in car on a trip that seemed endless, it was the best I could do.  My Father didn't believe in making any unnecessary stops.  I remember asking him once why we never stopped at any of the rest stops (except for gas), and well…rested. HIs answer? We’ll rest when we get to where we’re going.

Little did I know that by adopting the practice of avoiding unnecessary stops, my Father was teaching me an important life lesson and inoculating me against a common temptation: the danger of premature rest.  The scriptures inform us that God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, God rested — after the work was completed.  Premature rest is when you rest before your work is finished.  It's like making unnecessary stops when you're trying to reach a destination. We all need rest. But premature rest caps our potential, stunts our growth, and limits our opportunities.

More of us would be much further along our life's path if we stopped getting off at the rest areas.  Any place worth going, anything worth having, and anything worth doing is going to cost more than you think, and take longer than you expected. 

In his book The Dip, Seth Godin writes that in every valuable pursuit, you will hit a valley of disappointment after an initial rush of excitement.  Your destiny is decided by your response to the dip. God created the world without resistance. Unfortunately, we are not so lucky. On the journey to better, we will encounter multiple dips: opposition, frustration, fear, jealousy, misunderstanding, and countless others. 

Make a promise to yourself today that the next time you hit a dip on your way to better, you won't stop.

Don’t let the dip depress you.

Or discourage you.

Or detour you.

Expect the dips, and don’t stop moving. Rest when you get there.