Punchline

200 Words: God is generous, why are we envious

God speaks:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks (Isaiah 55).

Thank God, God’s ways are not our ways:

Obviously, God does not have our faults of selfishness, laziness, malice, lust and greed (Henry Wansborough, Universalis).

The Parable of the Vineyard Workers (Matthew 20) reinforces the point:

The landless poor would gather in the town square hoping to be hired as day labourers. As today in many Third-World countries, the poor do not save for tomorrow, but spend what they get on immediate needs. Thus, a day’s wage would pay for that day’s food or other needs.

Now for the punchline:

In giving the full day’s wage to those hired last, the owner shows his compassion not according to what they have earned, but according to what they need (Montague, Companion God, p.237).

God is generous, why are we envious (Matthew 20:15)?

God satisfies people’s needs and desires. He doesn’t respond to what people earn.

In fact, God is so generous that he dwarfs people’s desires:

Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3).

Amen.