The wife of a close pastor friend of ours enjoys telling how she awoke one night to find her husband asleep on his elbows and knees at the foot of the bed. His arms were cupped before him as if he were embracing the base of a tree, and he was muttering. “George! What on earth are you doing?” she cried. “Shhh,” he answered, still asleep. “I’m holding a pyramid of marbles together, and if I move, it’s going to tumble down…” A classic pastor’s dream! First, because it was the subconscious revelation of a pressured parson. Second, because the pyramid of marbles is an apt metaphor for a pastor’s work.

Liberating Ministry From The Success Syndrome, K. Hughes, Tyndale, 1988, p. 177