Every area of life has room for excellence, but it takes a desire to improve beyond what has already been accomplished. It does not take any excellence to be exactly like everyone else. Sometimes it is not necessary to even be excellent, to impress everyone else. No matter how good things seem to us, they can always be better. It has been said that the good is the natural enemy of the best. What normally happens is that we keep things good enough for long enough that they can get bad! Then something has to be done to fix the problem. How patient God is with us to help us when we find ourselves in those situations!
There are examples of people in the Bible who pushed themselves beyond what was expected of them. They gave God all they had, and He added His blessing to their efforts. The results were nothing short of phenomenal. Think about Noah building that amazing ark to protect every species of land animals, with only God’s instructions to guide him. He had never even seen rain, let alone any kind of boat before! Nevertheless, he worked diligently and excellently to obey God’s command, and God rewarded him abundantly.
Our children need to learn that God expects them to do more than a good job. He has blessed them with gifts and abilities, and it is only right and reasonable that they devote those gifts to bringing glory to Him. Doing something with excellence means giving the job your utmost—your very best. Often it means researching and learning how to do a task even better than you did before. Excellence also includes inspecting your work when you think you’re finished, to see if there is any detail you may have overlooked. Children can apply these practices to their daily chores and to schoolwork. Even the very young can understand what it means to do their best and then to make their best even better. As you teach your children about excellence, remind them of Noah and the excellent job that he did, which saved his life and the lives of all his family and the animal kingdom.
MEMORY VERSE
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Ecclesiastes 9:10