‘It’s not fair!’ was a frequent cry in our home when our three boys were younger.
I’ve been thinking ‘It’s not fair!’ more and more recently. Reflecting on God’s grace I’ve been struck once again that there is nothing fair about it.
The parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20 is a graphic illustration of God’s generosity to the least deserving. It wasn’t normal for a landowner to go out to hire workers – he usually sent his foreman. But five times this landowner went out into the marketplace to look for workers. At 5pm, when the working day was almost done, he hired another group of labourers. He instructed the foreman to pay them for a day’s work, even though they must have been in the vineyard barely an hour. The other workers grumbled, not because they had been underpaid, but because these other workers had been overpaid. They were outraged by God’s grace.
