Matthew 20 Devotional Sharing by Kelly Kang (Gracepoint – Berkeley):
Matt 20:1-16

• What is my reaction to the fact that there is no extra “reward” for serving God longer?  What is my attitude towards God’s generosity and grace towards others? (From Today’s Devotional Reflection Questions)

I think my gut reaction to the fact that there is no extra “reward” for serving God longer is that it’s unfair.  But just with little bit of thinking, I know how ridiculous this kind of thinking is since participating in God’s work is an undeserved privilege to begin with.  The fact that a holy God chooses to use sinners like me should never cease to amaze me.  By participating in God’s work, I am protected and spared from living a life of utter meaninglessness all to end in death.   But living in this world, it’s easy to forget this.

In this parable, it describes the state of the workers before they were invited to the vineyard to work as people “who were standing in the market place doing nothing.”  Although it may sound offensive, this is an accurate description of life outside of God.  Sure, people are busy pursuing their lives, making money,  getting married, starting a family, but in the end, all of their pursuits are meaningless in light of the fact that they will die one day.

It’s hard to see that life outside of God as “standing in the market place doing nothing.”  It’s so easy to feel like all the action is in the “market place”  and doing the things that people of the world are doing seems like that’s the way to go, to maximize one’s life.   And by serving God, we are led to feel like we are missing out.  Some people even go as far as feeling like they are being short changed for having been inducted into God’s work too early.  They envy the so called eleventh-hour workers and wished they could’ve lived it out first.

This parable has a huge warning for me, someone who has been a Christian for a long time and is serving the LORD in a fairly active manner.  I need to guard my heart against this kind of sense of entitlement and forgetting much which led the workers who were hired first to grumble against the owner’s generosity towards the eleventh hour workers.

How can I heed the warnings from this parable?  I need to regularly meditate on how I have been the recipient of God and others’ generosity and grace.  I need to remember that all that I have and enjoy I don’t deserve and the fact that I get to even serve God is a huge privilege and protection.  Lord, please give me a generous heart that comes from remembering how much I have been given so that I can truly give you praise when I see you being generous with others and join you in doing the same.