By Wendy Choy-Chan

Last week, Emi shared (https://aawolsisters.com/2023/03/14/excellence-employing-and-enjoying/) about excellence being about the process and not the product, that excellence is in living. 

In Chinese, there is no “ing” that you can add to the end of a verb. To convey the progressive verb tense, you need to add words like “right now and continuing to” before the verb, which makes a sentence quite cumbersome. So, we usually assume or hope that the audience will catch the “ing” from the context. Unfortunately, there is often a loss in communication and words like faith and love become abstract concepts, perceiving them as commandments (goals/products) that we are to achieve, and not the actual on-going day-by-day, moment-by-moment experiences and interactions that we have with God. It is as if God has told us his expectations and now he waits at the finish line to see whether we will reach excellency in these aspects. 

The temptation is to grind through the journey to achieve excellent faith and love, because as long as we reach the end, we get our reward. We forget that the love of our Father God is being continually poured into our hearts by the Spirit (Rom 5:5), that Christ is right now living in us (Gal 2:20), that the Spirit is testifying non-stop with our spirits (hearts) that we are the beloved children of God (Rom 8:16). And with the “excellent” Triune God be-“ing” with us, we are already liv-”ing” in excellence, living a life of trust-”ing” and lov-”ing” God.

Wendy Choy-Chan came to North America from Hong Kong when she was 15. After graduating with a MScE, she worked as a telecommunications engineer for a few years before becoming a full-time mom. She earned her MA in Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in 2016, and is now pursuing a D.Min in Affective Spirituality and Christian Formation at Multonmah Biblical Seminary. Wendy lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and two daughters.