Striving for Excellence…
I’ve been a bit quiet lately. My semester was winding down. Looking back, I wrote tens of pages of reports, observations, and analytical planning on what I would do as a teacher. I had few words left for regular posting.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that I was slowly and steadily building a 4.0 average. This was a new experience. It excited me, drove me, compelled me.
And it drove others crazy. There are some who don’t understand the drive for a number in a college setting. It seems prideful, arrogant, useless, a chasing of the wind, full of sound and fury and absolutely meaningless.
In the old days, I would have agreed. A 4.0 was about being perfect. All the facts were learned, all the t’s crossed, and the i’s dotted. It wasn’t me, and for me, it was not achievable. I gave up early.
Going back as an older adult, I’m finding things have changed. A 4.0 is no longer about perfection. It is a question of meeting or exceeding standards and expectations. Thus far, my profs have excellently documented standards and expectations, and I’ve been able to meet them.
It isn’t about being perfect. It’s about working and striving to be excellent in my learning and prove it by meeting or exceeding standards and expectations.
So I have a right to be pleased and proud (and maybe brag a bit too much). Yet I believe the pursuit of excellence is truly a God-thing. We are commanded to think about excellent (among other adjectives) things and then practice them:
For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them].
Practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and model your way of living on it, and the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:8–9, Amplified Bible Classic Edition
And yet, it’s not about just worldly excellence. Worldly excellence that does not violate God’s boundaries is a hallmark of the mature Christian who has found the calling of God on their lives to do what they are doing and pressing onward to fulfill that call. But in pressing forward, the mature Christian is looking for that day of meeting our God face-to-face. It’s about letting go, remembering the freedom of the forgiveness Christ won on the Cross, and living with reckless abandon to His plan and purpose for us. It’s about a relentless pursuit of conforming to His Word by renewing the mind:
I admit that I haven’t yet acquired the absolute fullness that I’m pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ has called me to fulfill and wants me to discover. I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead. I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory-prize through the anointing of Jesus.
Philippians 3:12–14, The Passion Translation
And this goal and final 4.0 is better than anything I could seek on this earth. It is not obtained by my perfection, but by my submission to these truths:
- that I am imperfect, broken, flawed
- that I can do nothing without God’s strength
- that everything outside God’s will is garbage and dung
