Dressing Down

Today I got in trouble from one of Australia's foremost Old Testament scholars.

This morning I missed the shower a few times. And every time you miss the shower it adds about 15 minutes on to your morning. And this morning I meant to get up at 7 but I didn't make it to the shower till 8, the time I need to leave for College.

So I went to college about half an hour late. When I arrived I was debating whether or not to go into the lecture. We had a visiting lecturer today who I have found to be rather uninteresting in the past so I considered just going straight to the Library to study for my assessment. But in the end I thought "I'll go to the last 20 minutes, they might be useful."

So I walked into the classroom and everyone turned to look at me. The lecturer (who, did I mention, is one of Australia's foremost Old Testament scholars) looked at me and said "What's your excuse?"

I wasn't sure if he was being friendly or not so I said "Everyone was in the shower."

The class laughed but he didn't.

"That's no excuse." he said.

"Oh," I replied "it's all I've got."

Because that annoys me when people ask for an excuse and then you give them one and they say "That's no excuse" and I think, well actually it is. And I can't give you a better one because I don't have one, that would be lying.

He said "Well you look alright without a shower. You should have just come."

Which I decided to take as a compliment so I said "Thank you"

He replied "You can sit down"

About 5 minutes later another guy rocked up late. His lame excuse was that he had a baby to look after. The lecturer replied "You've got a wife to look after your son, you're here to come to college and you must be on time." Then he went on a tangent about how there is a grace period but the two of us had missed it and he should have locked the other guy out and anyone else who turned up late would be barred from entering for sure.

Then we got on with the lecture.

Until the end when he told us that Proverbs was speaking to people just like us who needed to come to class on time.

And then he dropped it.

Until the end of the last lecture when he told us again that he was sorry to have got us in trouble but we needed to come to class on time. We have to be punctual or our ministries will suffer because people think that we have no integrity.

By that stage I had decided I was glad I went to class because getting busted was much more interesting than doing study. Plus the lecture were pretty good too, he gave my brain a work out.