I think Peyton Manning is the best quarterback ever, and the fact that Bill Polian picked him when most of the people I read, at the time, were plugging Ryan Leaf makes Polian a tremendous visionary. Polian has won three NFL Executive of the Year awards and his legacy is pretty much cemented as a great football man. Nevertheless, his job was to build a good team and after years of speculation, it became clear when Manning sat out the 2011 season that he did a poor job at building that team around Manning.
If asked who the greatest NBA coach ever is, I think I'd have to say Phil Jackson, despite the fact I never really liked him. Nevertheless, at the end of the Shaq-Kobe era, when they had picked up Payton and Malone and looked unstoppable in the early playoffs, he was significantly outcoached by Larry Brown. The same Larry Brown who senselessly refuses to use rookies.
I believe my father is perhaps the best Bible Quiz coach ever, yet I can remember a specific quiz where he got out-coached. I think even the best preachers ever have a sermon or two that lacks the normal quality. I think the best radio host will have an occasional show that is not listenable, and the best band ever didn't hit gold on 100% of their songs. In short, even the best are not perfect.
This is simultaneously encouraging and discouraging to me. It is discouraging to know that try as I might, I will fall short. I will never achieve perfection (some of you are thinking that I shouldn't worry, as I'm not even remotely close). I guess in my depraved nature it encourages me to know that everyone else is feeling the same sting of failure that I so often feel. Not sure if that should encourage me, but in some small way, it does.
What it really says to me, however, is not that I need to be encouraged, but that I can never stop striving. If even those who have achieved (and are so recognized for) greatness fall short, I need to not settle. If I am striving for something and appear to achieve it, I need to strive harder or for something greater. Life is full of small challenges, and I cannot rest.
So, I am now committed to persistently strive to be a better husband, father, and friend. I likewise committed to persistently strive for better at memorizing, studying, and applying Scripture. I am going to persistently strive for being a better steward of the time, money, and business opportunities God gives me. And most of all, I want to commit to persistently strive to be the best man of God I can be!
I kind of want to be perfect, too. And I too feel encouraged when people who I esteem struggle some with things I struggle with, sick as that might be. And I think you strive well in all the areas you mentioned. In other words, I agree with nearly all of your post here. However, in your next-to-last paragraph, when you end saying, "I cannot rest," I have to quibble. :-) I think you MUST rest. God said so. (And anyway, I think you are just jaded because you have been told that sleeping is a sign of depression!!)
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