Excellence is not perfection. Excellence is doing the best of your ability at all times. It is making a habit of paying attention and knowing that details matter. It is a continuous journey full of sincere effort, aiming high, walking intentionally, acting with purpose, and wise execution. Excellence involves doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. It is turning habits into performance and pursuing improvement over mere success. Excellence is doing things well even when no one is looking. We don’t act properly because we have excellence, but we have excellence because we make it a habit of acting properly.

Most people do not think excellence is achievable or important. They go through life doing just enough. “It’s not in my job description” is their philosophy.   They expect to get rewarded for showing up – even if they are still in their pajamas and their teeth are not brushed. They will do a task just enough to say it’s done, but never going the extra mile.

Many years ago, real torches with real fire blazed in the lighthouses off the coast of Maine.

The torches were delivered wrapped in a protective coating of aluminum foil. It was pretty tricky to install the torches. The installer had to tear the foil off in just the right way while lighting the torch or else he would have to put on some heavy protective gloves and use some tools to remove the foil without damaging the torch. It was awkward & dangerous.

One night, the workman was installing the torch. As he lit it, he noticed a very small piece of foil stuck to the torch. It was a calm night, a little foggy, but no storms. He judged that it wouldn’t be worth the effort to go to all the trouble and pain of removing that small piece of foil. It was so small anyway. So he just left it and went about his business.

The issue was, a couple of miles out, that little piece of foil created a shadow, a dark spot. A seasoned captain was guiding a ferry through the fog.  He depended on the lighthouse to guide his way in. But because of that little piece of foil casting a shadow, the captain thought he was somewhere else and crashed into the rocks. – 250 plus people died that night.

Excellence is doing the job right. A great basketball coach, John Wooden, asked, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?” When we make a habit of doing things right the first time, not only do we save time, energy and money, we are also walking in excellence.

Booker T Washington said, “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” It is easy to just do the bare minimum, but to come up with ideas to make things better shows superiority. You can put a box of donuts on a table and it gets the job done; or you can put a pretty tablecloth on the table with a flower in a jar and the donuts on a plate and suddenly the atmosphere is elevated and people feel their importance.

Excellence is an act of honor. By walking in excellence, we honor the job we have been given. We honor the people we serve. We honor ourselves by having self-respect in what we do. But most of all, we honor our Lord by being faithful, trustworthy, and dependable.

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men. (Colossians 3:23)

Do you see a man who excels in his work?

He will stand before kings;

He will not stand before unknown men. (Proverbs 22:29)