Since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church. 1 Corinthians 14:12.

Excellence, n., the condition of being better than others. Daniel and Solomon were both committed to excellence - but one was more truly 'successful' than the other. Excellence is another slippery idea. Maximizing your effectiveness, developing and using your talents to the full, being useful as well as decorative is alright, but for whose glory? A brilliant life for the glory of self is a wasted life. An obscure life ministering to enhance others is eternally successful. Arthur Miller says of Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman, 'He is writing his name in a block of ice on a hot day'. 'Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not' was the Lord's word to Baruch (Jeremiah 45:5).

On the other hand, as Anthony Campolo put it so well, 'two dangers threaten the survival of Christendom. The one is mediocrity; the other is success...' Mediocrity, he says, has come to characterize the behaviour of most people in most institutions. 'They live out their Christian commitment in a mediocre fashion within the context of churches that have mediocre programs... Holiness is excellence, so there is no excuse for mediocrity. Success is worldly, so there is no excuse for Christians pursuing it'. (Forward to Christian Excellence: Alternative to Success, by Jon Johnston, Baker, 1985).

Jesus, have I done my best - for you?