Excuses

The world is full of excuses to explain away inadequate performance.  We all do it.  I have heard more than my share.

The Toronto Star printed some excuses that teachers had received from their students for various things that had gone wrong.  One student, explaining why he was late to class wrote, "I was kidnapped by aliens and interrogated for three hours."  Another student who failed to turn in his essay wrote, "Well, the bus driver read it and liked it so much that he kept it to show his other passengers."  Another student said, "Well you see I got mugged on the way to school.  I offered him my money, my lunch, and my penknife, but all he wanted was my essay."  The winning excuse came from a 14-year-old boy named Mike who arrived one hour late to school with his pants soaked up to his knees.  He wrote, "I was just about to board the bus when I found I had lost my ticket.  Since it would take too long to walk to school, I hopped the fence onto a golf course.  I headed for a creek that crisscrossed several fairways until I found a likely spot for lost golf balls.  Retrieving three balls from their watery graves, I then made my way to the clubhouse where I sold the balls for my bus fare.  And that is why I am late."

We can get very creative with our excuses.  I don't know why we don't just do the job right to begin with, and then we wouldn't have to worry about conjuring up some kind of creative excuse.  It is so easy to just go with the flow and make excuses, instead of making the right choice to begin with.  Sometimes I wake up in the night and can't go back to sleep because I’m thinking about people making choices who have no way of knowing the potential consequences their choices will bring.  I lay there wondering, "Why don't we just do it God's way so we don't have to worry about excuses?"