I’m not sure if you have noticed this or not, but it seems like people make up a lot of excuses these days.  No one is ever at fault.  They always have an excuse.  Winnona Ryder, after being arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue with $4700 worth of clothing stuffed in her bag, said “I was told I should shoplift.  My director said I should try it out.”  Even in the midst of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives said they were unprepared for a spill of this magnitude because of faulty data they had received from the U.S Government.  Apparently, 2004 projections said that any oil spilled in the gulf would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather.  In other words, they said, “How were we supposed to know the oil would come ashore – you said it wouldn’t!”

It is this cultural trend that makes Romans 1:20 all the more jarring:  "..so that men are without excuse."  When it comes to our lives and how we live them, because of God's faithful revelation, we have no excuse.  None.  We should know better.

 Now, sure, we'll try to come up with some, but that's often based on a cultural creation of the God we want, not the God who truly is.  We mold God into our image so that our excuses work.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this in the German Church during the days of Hitler's rise.  He said “If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature.  But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me.  This place is the Cross of Christ.  And whoever would find Him, must go to the foot of the cross…”

As I think about the call God has placed upon my life - and yours - my desire is to answer that call as purely as I can.  There is no excuse for me.  All I can do is throw myself at the foot of the cross, humbly relying on His Spirit to empower me to live as He has commanded.  I do not shape Him - He shapes me - so God, keep me still and pliable in your Hands.