One of my strengths is persistence.  I am a turtle by nature.  I would rather break a task down into small pieces and tackle each piece in its turn instead of work like a crazy person to get something done up against a deadline.  There have been very few times I haven’t had something finished well before a deadline approached.

I used to have perfectionist tendencies, but now I am a big fan of good enough.  I work with persistence to get something done but don’t fuss about it being perfect.  If I make a mistake with weaving or knitting, I ask if I can live with it.  Sometimes I can’t, and I will rip back to the mistake.  But most of the time I decide that no one will ever notice.

Our lives as Christians are another place where persistence is better than perfection.  Every day I get up and have my devotions.  Every day I ask God to help me follow his guiding, to be a witness to his love.  And every night I go to sleep knowing that I didn’t succeed perfectly.  Some days I don’t even do my best.  But another day dawns and God gives me a fresh chance to follow him.  I may not follow perfectly, but I am stubbornly persistent.

A favorite Bible verse about persistence is Galatians 6:9:  “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  This verse doesn’t talk about following God perfectly, it talks about not giving up.  We could think that, because we messed up yesterday, there is no point in trying to follow God today.  But God encourages us to continue to try.

So, continue to do your best in following God each day.  Do your best, but don’t beat yourself up over your failures.  Ask for God’s forgiveness and go on.  Persistence is better than perfection.  Perfection won’t come until we see God face to face in heaven.