Whatever you do, do well. Ecclesiastes 9:10

While speaking at the National Press Club, President Eisenhower told his audience that he regretted that he didn’t have a better political background and that he was not more of an orator. He said his lack of these qualities reminded him of his boyhood days in Kansas when an old farmer had a cow for sale. The buyer asked the farmer about the cow’s pedigree, butterfat production, and monthly production of milk. The farmer said, “I don’t know what a pedigree is, and I don’t have an idea about butterfat production, but she’s a good cow, and she’ll give you all the milk she has.”

Everybody appreciates a person, or even a cow, who gives it his or her all. Yet how many times do we find ourselves just doing enough to get by—especially in our marriages? It’s so easy to short the person we love, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Not when it comes to love. Surely that’s why Paul called love “the most excellent way” (see 1 Corinthians 13).

Historically, the word excellence has been used as a title of honor. It derives from the verb excel, which means “to go beyond average.” And that is exactly what’s required when you offer your very best. Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields cookies, understood this when she said, “Good enough never is.” The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

What is that little extra, in concrete terms, when it comes to loving each other with all you’ve got today? Do you try to do well as a spouse, or are you just coasting along? You don’t have to have everything figured out in order to give this relationship your all—so do it today.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.” —Martin Luther King Jr.