My father was a workaholic.\u00a0\u00a0My mother was a perfectionist.\u00a0\u00a0Put them together and you get me.\u00a0\u00a0If I had to remember one key word of my early life it would be the word \u201cexcellence.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It was never enough to be average – not in school, nor in athletics, nor various methods of competition.\u00a0\u00a0I carried this early training into my adulthood, and it was never enough to preach an average sermon or deliver an average lecture or even be an average competitor in trivial things like monopoly or ping pong, or even in – come to think of it – trivial pursuit. Now, in my early eighties, I can\u2019t even be an average retiree.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Friends wonder how I keep the schedule that I keep.\u00a0\u00a0I receive a daily e-mail from an organization that posts quotes to make readers think.\u00a0\u00a0The other day, they posted the following quote from an anonymous author, \u201cExcellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.\u201d I\u2019ll have to let others decide how well I\u2019ve done on the average to excellence scale.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ll just be satisfied by \u201creaching forward to those things which are ahead, (as) I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus\u201d (Philippians 3:13-14). How about you?\u00a0\u00a0Are you striving to be average or excellent?<\/p>\n
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My father was a workaholic.\u00a0\u00a0My mother was a perfectionist.\u00a0\u00a0Put them together and you get me.\u00a0\u00a0If I had to remember one key word of my early life it would be the word \u201cexcellence.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It was never enough to be average – not in school, nor in athletics, nor various methods of competition.\u00a0\u00a0I carried this early training into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3646,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions\/3646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}