It's Not My Fault

I really did write a prayer on Tuesday, but the system wouldn't cooperate. Clearly, not my fault!I spent a good thirty minutes looking on the web for the audio from a Mac computer saying, "It's not my fault." It's rather amusing to hear a computer beating you to the punch when you've just lost an hour's worth of work. Then I hoped I would find some Top Ten Excuses for use when it's clearly not my fault. Instead I found excuses for not saving (can anyone say recession?), excuses for not exercising (only 10?), excuses for not turning in Math homework (but that involved knowing enough math for the excuses to be funny), excuses for not blogging (too close to home). Just when I was about to give up on excuses I found The Heart of Innovation . They posted 100 excuses for not innovating, but then they offered these solutions to quell excuses:

1. Make a list of your three most bothersome excuses.
2. Turn each excuse into a powerful question, starting with the words "How can I?" or "How can we?" (For example, if your excuse is "That's R&D's job," you might ask "How can I make innovation my job?" or "How can I help my team take more responsibility for innovating?"
3. Brainstorm each question -- alone and with your team.

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, How can I make my life more faithful and how can I take more responsibility in making our congregation more vibrant and more serving? How can WE offer outreach, share the gospel, connect with the community, mentor our youth, serve the suffering, and find ways to unite the disengaged? How can we prioritize our actions to bring about your vision and mission? Help us to find a way over, around or through whatever obstacle is in our way. Let excuses fall aside for innovation and remedying actions. Amen.