Excellence

I was a bit bored the other day, and so I began to think. Thinking is normally fun, and sometimes I surprise myself with the things I think about. During this particular occasion, I thought about excellence. I'm a huge sports fan, so I'm always really impressed when athletes do their job well. But this drive for excellence isn't just noticed on a playing field. When I think of the word excellent, the word expert also comes to mind. A teacher once told me that in order to be considered an expert at something, one spends about 10,000 hours performing that task or job. 10,000 hours...that's a little over 416 days. 416 days of someone's life dedicated to something specific. I think that goes to show how important it is to work at something in order to be good at it.

Think about this: Tiger Woods (even though he's had a rough year), one of the greatest golfers of all time, had racked up about 10,000 hours of time on the golf course before he could drive (a car...you might get the pun). Steve Prefontaine (google him if you don't know who he is) ran his way into the 10,000 mile club before he even went to Oregon - where he would set all kinds of track and field records. It's easy to measure excellence in sports because it's easy to compare performance and statistics. By the time these two guys went to college, they had already dedicated over a solid year of their life doing nothing but practicing, training, competing. Sure, they were talented, but think about how much more time they invested in their sport compared to other people their age. It's crazy.

These are the things I think about. I love watching people do things they are good at. Good actors, good comedians, good athletes, good singers, good preachers, good parents, good teachers...the list goes on. I get a lot of joy out of that. And when I think about the amount of time they spend practicing and getting better, it really amazes me.

And then I think about myself. 10,000 hours...have I even done anything for a solid 10,000 hours? The only thing I can think of is sleep. I guess I'm an expert sleeper. Another thing that could come close to 10,000 hours of time is watching tv...and easily half of that is sports. So sleep and tv...total that up and it's about 20,000 hours...which means about 2 1/4 of my life...and I think that estimation might be on the low side. I'm 23. Does that mean I'm an expert at being lazy?

It's just a really interesting thing to think about. How many things are worth spending 10,000 hours doing? I guess that's for you to answer. I'm pursuing a career in ministry...I can definitely say that I haven't spent 10,000 hours prepping, studying, etc. for that. Going further, what if we spent 10,000 hours reading the Bible? You'd probably be able to recite it cover to cover from memory. What if we prayed for 10,000 hours? I can't imagine how God would use us.

I've heard so many times how we're supposed to tithe and give not just our money, but our time and our talents as well. We are to tithe at least a tenth. What if we spent a tenth of a year (about a month and two weeks) every year in solitude with the Lord? That's about 2.5 hours a day. What if we actually spent a tenth of our lives serving others? I once heard that if every single church member tithed 10 percent, world hunger would no longer exist. These are the things I've been thinking about. 10 percent doesn't seem like much time until you think of ten percent of a year or it doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice until it's 10 percent of your paycheck.

But God calls us to do these things. If I spent 10,000 hours in solitude with the Lord, praying and reading my Bible, how would that change my spiritual life? How would my habits change, and how would I treat other people? How could I help others? Why does God call us to do these things? It's not to make us miserable, but he wants us to do things with excellence, and I definitely want to serve God with excellence.