The Banquet is Ready

Roger Bannister had every excuse in the world. He was a full-time medical student, then a junior doctor — up before dawn for hospital rounds, buried in textbooks most nights. Nobody would have blinked if he'd said running a sub-four-minute mile just wasn't realistic given his schedule. Track and field wasn't even his job. It was the thing he did in the margins, on borrowed time, on tired legs.

He trained anyway. Early mornings on a cinder track in Oxford, often alone, often exhausted before he'd even started. On May 6, 1954, he broke the four-minute mile — a barrier doctors and scientists had called physically impossible. And.... he did it on a lunch break from the hospital, then went back to work that afternoon. He never treated his circumstances as a permission slip to quit.

That's the thing about excuses — they're rarely lies. Bannister really was busy. Your alarm really is loud and your bed really is warm. The phone call really is uncomfortable. The product guideline really is one more thing on a full plate. Your spouse or your friend or your parent really did pick a bad time to need you. The volunteer sign-up really did land on a week you have nothing left to give. And the hurt, the doubt, the pride you're carrying — that's real too. None of it is fake. It's just not disqualifying.

"'Come, the banquet is ready.' But they all began making excuses." (Luke 14: 17-18) 

Jesus teaches a lesson about this. A man threw a great banquet and invited many guests, but when the table was set, they all started backing out. One had just bought a field and needed to inspect it. Another had bought five yoke of oxen and was on his way to try them out. Another had just gotten married. "They all alike began to make excuses." Every reason was legitimate — a field, an ox, a marriage. Nobody was lying about their obligations. But every one of them missed the table.

That's the trap. An excuse doesn't have to be dishonest to be a no. It just has to sound reasonable enough that you believe it before you've even tested it. The alarm goes off and "I'm tired" sounds reasonable. The hard day hits and "not today" sounds reasonable. The doubt creeps in and "Jesus doesn't fit right now" sounds the most reasonable of all. But reasonable and right aren't the same word.

Mornings matter because they're the first vote you cast for who you're going to be that day. Showing up as the hardest working person in the room, staying sharp enough to be the expert, actually stopping to listen so you leave someone better for the encounter, having the courage to do the next right thing, serving without exception even when you've got nothing left — none of that is about having no excuses available. It's about deciding in advance that the excuse, however true, doesn't get the final word.

And on the hardest days — when it's not tiredness but real hurt, real confusion, real pride standing between you and God — the invitation doesn't change. The banquet in that story went out to the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame — the ones with the least capacity to reciprocate, the most reason to think they didn't belong there. The table was never about having it together. It was about showing up.

Which excuse shows up most often for you — and is it actually true, or just reasonable-sounding?

Pick one place from today's list — the alarm, the call, the conversation, the ask — and do the next right thing anyway before you let yourself talk it through.

Come now, the banquet is ready. The table is set with a chair for you.