The Invitation to the Vineyard

I have been working since I was 17, and in that time, I’ve encountered my fair share of bosses who don’t like being, well, fair.

There was the retail gig that paid me less than the official minimum wage because I was a minor and scheduled me for long shifts because it meant cheaper labor. There was the restaurant manager who tried to convince me to leave seventh period early so I could waitress on a busy dinner shift (totally illegal, by the way). There was the unpaid internship with the editor who had no sense of work/life balance.

Our resumes are all full of these experiences — it’s capitalism, after all. It conditions us to look out for ourselves, because we know no one else will. And it breeds an attitude of suspicion that often blooms into jealousy when we encounter the reckless mercy of God.

Most of us work hard for what we have in this life, and so we make the mistake of thinking we deserve the good things that come our way. That’s all right and good when we’re talking about a just wage. But sometimes we get our lines blurred and we begin to think we deserve, or have done something to earn, the salvation offered by Christ.

I am not the laborer who has borne the heat of long hours in the sun. I am the straggler, the lost one, the idler at the marketplace as the day draws to a close. 

“As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.” — Isaiah 55:9

©LPi