Morning.
Excuses, excuses, excuses!
Is there anybody here who has never made an excuse for not doing something they should have done, or for doing something they shouldn’t have done?
As a teacher, I’ve heard a few good excuses in my time.
There are the usual ones - ‘I don’t have my homework because the dog ate it.. the baby was sick on it… we are moving house ..’ – what, again?
And of course printers always break down when coursework is due in, everybody knows that!
Some excuses are just too weird to be not true though. I remember in my last school a 6th former coming late to class [sign why r u late to practise!]
He said ‘well I’ve been to Warrington to see if there was a weasel in my weasel trap’!
You just couldn’t make that up could you.
Excuses involve imagination, thinking of something that might be true.
The comedian, Jasper Carrott, does a turn where he reads out excuses people give for causing a traffic accident.
Where you have to fill in a form for the insurance claim, and say why the accident happened, in your own words.
He says these are real, beliveit or not!
1] "Coming home I drove into the wrong drive and collided with a tree I don't have."
2] "Going to work this morning I drove out of my drive straight into a bus… which should not have been there, because it was 5 minutes early."
4] "I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought."
5] "I realised the car was on fire so took my dog and smothered it with a blanket."
6] My car collided with a cow. The question on the claim form said: What warning was given by you? A: Horn. Q: What warning was given by the other party? A: Moo.
7] "I started to turn and it was at this point I noticed a camel and an elephant tethered at the verge. This distraction caused me to lose concentration and hit a bollard."
9] "I didn't think the speed limit applied after midnight"
10] "I knew the dog was possessive about the car but I would not have asked him to drive it if I had thought there was any risk."
11] "Windscreen broken. Cause unknown. Probably Voodoo."
12] "The car in front hit the pedestrian but he got up so I hit him again"
13] "In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a lamp post."
14] "An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished."
15] "I was thrown from the car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows."
16] "I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it."
17] "The pedestrian was all over the road. I had to swerve several times before I hit him."
18] "I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel.."
19] "As I approached a junction a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before."
20] "To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck a pedestrian."
21] "The pedestrian had no idea which way to run so I ran over him."
22] "My car got hit by a submarine."
23] "The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week."
24] "I knocked a man down; he admitted it was his fault for he had been knocked down before."
25] "I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat I found that I had a fractured skull."
Some excuses are not so funny.
I get so tired of listening to football managers making excuses for their players’ violent fouls, or for losing by blaming the referee. Why can’t they just admit the player was at fault, or that they were the poorer team?
Excuses are so often a sign of weakness, or refusal to face the truth, or worse.
I quote my beloved Bob Dylan .. ‘how many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn’t see?’
Looking away when you know something is wrong, is an excuse.
Probably the most chilling excuse ever made in history was that made at the Nuremberg trials by Adolf Eichmann , the man responsible for gassing 6 million people in the Nazi concentration camps, when he said ‘I was only obeying orders’.
So.. Is an excuse the same as a reason?
I doubt it. We tend to think an excuse isn’t really true, whereas a reason is. I won’t be here in 100 years. There is a reason for that, I’ll be dead - it’s not an excuse!
But if I say .. there is no point in learning sign language, it will never be the same as hearing - that’s an excuse.
Years ago, in the 60s, I read a book , which was kind of a cult book at the time, by a man called Carlos Castaneda. It was something to do with mushrooms in Native American culture, but I can remember almost nothing about it - except one line, which has stayed with me ever since.
He said ‘some things are a pity, and some are an issue’.
‘Some things are a pity, and some are an issue’.
What he meant was, you have to accept some things that you can do nothing about. They are a pity, but they are part of life. Like misfortune, like losing people you love, like dying.
But other things you can do something about, you can fight and try to make them better, and those things are an issue.
Like how you deal with misfortune. Like what you make of your life. These things are an issue. You have a choice.
I think it is very, very important to know which things are a pity, and which are an issue.
If it is a pity, there is a reason for it, and you cannot change it, so accept it.
If it is an issue , then not trying to change it is just an excuse.
Don’t make excuses.
Stand for prayer.
Lord’s prayer and blessing.
