Monday Morning Manna: Average or Excellent?

Monday Morning Manna: Average or Excellent?

My father was a workaholic.??My mother was a perfectionist.??Put them together and you get me.??If I had to remember one key word of my early life it would be the work “excellence.”??It was never enough to be average - not in school, nor in athletics, nor various methods of competition.??I 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’t even be an average retiree.???Friends wonder how I keep the schedule that I keep.??I receive a daily e-mail from an organization that posts quotes to make readers think.??The other day, they posted the following quote from an anonymous author, “Excellence 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.” I’ll have to let others decide how well I’ve done on the average to excellence scale.??I’ll just be satisfied by “reaching 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” (Philippians 3:13-14). How about you???Are you striving to be average or excellent??

?

?

Dr. Dan R. Crawford, Senior Professor, Chair of Prayer Emeritus; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. Former Head of Task Force for the Teaching of Prayer in Theological Education for America’s National Prayer Committee.? Administrative Consultant for the Valley Baptist Missions Education Center. President of Disciple All Nations, Inc.

?

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Dan Crawford的更多文章

  • Monday Morning Manna: Time-Change Memories

    Monday Morning Manna: Time-Change Memories

    There are life-changing moments in ministry that come rushing back on time-change Sunday. Yesterday, as I was reading…

  • Monday Morning Manna: Mugs and Prayer

    Monday Morning Manna: Mugs and Prayer

    We’ve been selling everything in a rent house in order to eventually sell the house, and as a part of it, we took…

  • Monday Morning Manna: Interim

    Monday Morning Manna: Interim

    Interim is a term describing the space of time between an ending and a beginning. When used for a church it refers to…

    1 条评论
  • Monday Morning Manna: Impressions

    Monday Morning Manna: Impressions

    You suspect God is calling you for some special task or even for a career of ministry. How can you know your call is…

  • Monday Morning Manna: One More Movie - A Favorite

    Monday Morning Manna: One More Movie - A Favorite

    The last couple of weeks I have written about movies that I should not have attended. Let me go a different direction…

  • Monday Morning Manna: More Forgotten Endings

    Monday Morning Manna: More Forgotten Endings

    My manna of last week, including a confession of attending the movie “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in spite of my…

  • Monday Morning Manna: Forgotten Endings

    Monday Morning Manna: Forgotten Endings

    Memory is one of God’s greatest gifts. The writer of Proverbs says, “The memory of the just is blessed” (Proverbs 10:7).

    1 条评论
  • Monday Morning Manna: Stop Praying, Start Dying

    Monday Morning Manna: Stop Praying, Start Dying

    In a recent year, 4500 Protestant churches closed, while only 3,000 opened, making it the first year that the number of…

  • Monday Morning Manna: God's Great Gift of Memory

    Monday Morning Manna: God's Great Gift of Memory

    Steve and I sat in the Bar B-Que Restaurant for three hours. Everyone else had come and gone, but we were enjoying one…

  • Monday Morning Manna: Welcome 2025

    Monday Morning Manna: Welcome 2025

    In Japan it is a 16th century tradition called "Forgetting the Year" party, in which people gather on New Years Eve and…