Great Reading

Have you read Junie B Jones? If you have not, you must go out right this minute and read Junie B Jones goes to Hawaii. I have been reading it with Sam and I am telling you, we howled out loud together. The story itself is very amusing, but it is written in such a way that we both got so tickled in places we had to stop and recover before we could go on. In several of the places Sam had to re-read a sentence two or three times before he was over it and ready to move on. It is cleverly written and contains enough absurdity to amuse without being irritating. Excellent to read to with a nine year old.


It made me think about how seldom you find an excellent book to read. The one that you laugh over or cry over or finish with that wonderful satisfaction of an excellent ending. It is when you stumble upon such a find you realize how many books you have read that are less than excellent. They are acceptable, sometimes even good but I don't really see them as lacking until I read one that is perfectly delightful and immensely satisfying. Then in comparison they fall short.

Comparisons work that way, have you noticed? They can work for you, or against you. They can make you feel satisfied and perhaps a little superior and they can make you feel inadequate and inferior. So, we tend to avoid comparisons, we are encouraged to avoid comparisons. We should just do the best we can do and not try to be as good as Johnny or Sally. That is a solution of course. I just think it's not a good solution. I think it allows us to set no benchmark except our own satisfaction level. For some that level is incredibly high and for others it is unreasonably low. Over achievers and under achievers alike need a benchmark that is helpful in creating expectations that are reasonable and perhaps slightly ambitious without creating frustration and pressure. We are all limited in some way by ability and nature and talents and time. We need to acknowledge that and adjust for that, but not use that as an excuse to justify either extreme.

So what do we do with that? How can we use comparison in a healthier way so that it becomes a motivation and direction to help us move towards our own personal excellence? I really think it is much easier when we are secure in our relationship with God and our confidence that our value and worth is secure in His love for us. The more I define myself as a child of God, loved and accepted in all my brokenness, the more capable I am of comparing myself without going to either extreme. I do not do this with excellence always. When I do though, I often pick up ideas and concepts that help me move towards excellence. I find myself less threatened by comparison and more eager to figure out how I can do what I do better.

I can and do read lots of books. I find deeper satisfaction in reading those written with excellence. I want even more to live a life of deeper satisfaction, confident in the unconditional love of Father, expressed through the sacrifice of the Son and confirmed in the presence of the Spirit. This is excellence at it's best and for that there is no comparison.