The Cost and Impact of Excellence

At the mid-point of my life, I have greater empathy for those who opt-out of excellence as the trajectory of their lives. The cost of excellence is high! It requires patience when life doesn’t go as we hope. It requires grace when those around you are skeptical or belittling of your dreams. It requires a firm commitment that can only be sustained by an inner fire of purpose. It requires strength to climb hills that seem unconquerable. It requires perspective to see that failure on the road toward excellence is still progress worth celebrating.

Having said that, I want to encourage you that there are people who, in a moment, inspired by deep convictions, pain, or perhaps simply irreconcilable dissatisfaction with their life, choose a different path than the everyday survival many choose over time. Perhaps you find yourself at one of those crossroads. Perhaps there is a small voice inside your heart that whispers the tantalizing possibility that you were created for more than another night in front of the TV…created for more than the vain amusements and distractions that fill your time…created for more! As you read these words you stand with two roads stretching out before you. The one road filled with the comforting sense of the familiar for it is the road that brought you to this intersection…it stretches away before you, descending into a familiar valley. The other road turns into the mountains and the twisting trajectory is quickly obscured by tall trees and misty clouds. You sense that you were created for the mountains of impact and excellence…..but do you dare take that road? It is up to you…

For each of you pressing forward into excellence, I pray that you will see the smile of favor in the eyes of God as he walks with you on the journey.

Dan Scarrow

District Superintendent
North Central District of The C&MA