In my considered opinion, most people in the world want to do things as well as they can. We all pursue excellence as a rule; we just sometimes come up a bit short in the execution. Afterall, we all have different gifts and things that we are good at doing, but some folks have the deep drive as well as innate talent to do something excellently.

We think of professional and Olympic athletes, innovators and inventors, writers and other notable artists and everyday folks who show up in their jobs and perform them flawlessly. These are folks who take pride in what they do and hold themselves to a higher standard than the average Joe or Jane Doe.

Malcolm Gladwell posited that it took 10,000 hours of dedicated effort to achieve mastery in any one endeavor.

That’s roughly five consecutive years of 40-hour a week effort to get to 10,000 hours.

You have to really want to excel at something to put in that kind of sustained effort at anything. Yet to achieve excellence, nothing less than perfect practice over a sustained period of time will do.

The ancient philosopher, Aristotle, noted that “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

Yes…choice not chance determines whether or not we will succeed in our pursuit of excellence. We have to choose the pursuit of excellence, and in so doing not choose other things. We have to be willing to sacrifice some of what life offers us in order to get really good at whatever we are doing. I think of all the parents who sacrifice their time and things that they would like to do in order for their child or children to pursue excellence in a given endeavor (Spelling Bees, music and singing lessons, travel team practices and games, beauty pageants, etc). Wise choices are made many times along the way and the burdens that result from those choices are accepted as part of the pursuit.

The blessed assurance that we have as children of an unconditionally loving God is that God consistently and wisely chooses us. God gifts us and then loves us so much that we just might learn how to love God and other humans. God’s love is so powerful that it can transform us into excellent disciples who love as deeply and widely as we can. God knows that we can learn to love in the way God loves us and seems to continually offer us the chance to choose this most excellent way (as the Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth).

God does not make that choice for us however, we have free will and we need to choose to pursue excellence in loving over all of the other choices we have in our interactions with one another. As Aristotle noted, “choice not chance” determines how well or how poorly we will love. There’s a lot of folks out in the ether right now who are choosing to hate – and to hate most excellently. We can choose to love excellently and to show others how good it feels to turn the other cheek, to carry a burden an extra mile and to forgive when someone does us wrong. In this way we are in charge of our decision making and we will find that we are making excellent decisions to move our world a little bit closer to God’s kingdom here on earth.

Aristotle knew what he was teaching when he said, “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives…”. If you are fed up with settling for average or good enough, then I invite you to come to a faith community this week. There you will find people just like you who are looking for a more excellent way – a way to excel in loving God and each other. This way of being in the world requires sincere effort, intentionality and loving execution, but it is a pursuit of excellence that will make your life and our world a better place. Choose wisely this week on your journey!

The Rev. Albrant is pastor of Mineral and Mount Pleasant United Methodist churches.