Years ago I was calling people to look for volunteers for a bake sale. One of the women made an excuse to beat all others. 

"I am delivering triplets next week."

This was long before I found out that twins were in my future, but eventually there were times I pulled the twin card to get out of bringing a dish to the potluck. 

Being poor was a way I wiggled out of solicitations. When you are on public assistance you cannot be expected to be generous. Or at least that is what I told myself. 

But excuses have an expiration date. I can no longer use my large family as a reason for being busy, or exhausted. The twins do their own laundry, and pack their own lunches. Ben gets himself ready for school and goes shopping with his teacher to buy groceries to cook lunch. We are not scraping pennies, or dollars for that matter, as evidenced  by my extravagant sewing room and the receipts from the feed mill and hardware store for chickens. 

In marriage group we had a discussion about the story in scripture when a master sends out invitations to a wedding, and many make excuses. The excuses we use can insulate us from accountability. The room hummed as quartets huddled up to share stories. 

When the guests beg off coming, beggars are welcomed instead. It is the broken, the wounded parts of ourselves that are more willing to show up when God calls. 

The irony is that what we are being invited to is a feast. A banquet of kindness, and bounty. When we exempt ourselves with the justifications that keep us excluded, part of us goes hungry. 

All God is asking, is that we will please respond. 

“A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’  But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’  And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’  Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’  And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’  Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.  For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’”

Luke 14