What If God Took Your Excuses Away?

[327 words] Several years ago, while living in another city, one of the elders in the church here and this writer were making some calls on some of our members who had become negligent in their attendance with the house of God at the times of worship. As we sat in one home, we listened to a young mother give, as an excuse tor forsaking the assembly of the saints, that her children were unruly, they were difficult to handle, and very noisy, and that it was a source of embarrassment for her to bring them to services. Though this writer had heard these excuses before a hundred times, though he had always gently explained that children can never be expected to learn how to behave themselves in services until they are brought to services, he had never felt that such explanations had gotten the job done. And this also…