First Will Be Last…

Over the past year I have applied at several places for employment.  First part of the year I applied for jobs that I was educationally qualified for and the latter half of the year I applied for jobs that are minimum wages.   Last month I was hired at Casey’s.

Over the last week, the parable of the workers in the vineyard came to my heart (Matthew 20:1-16).  It is a story how the landowner went out every few hours to hire men to work in his vineyard for one denarius.  It didn’t matter whether they worked 12 hours or one hour, they all got the same rate of pay.   

The workers who worked all day for the same pay as those who worked for a partial day became envious and angry.  They felt that they were not being treated fairly and complained to the landowner.   The landowner offered each worker a rate of pay for the day and each worker had accepted the offer. 

As stated in my previous post, I was able to obtain a part-time minimum wage job at Casey’s last month.  Today I started part-time with a little higher than minimum wage with Wal-mart, which is a far cry from what I made from my previous employments.  Although my wages has decreased,  the humility, healing and  faith continue to grow in strength as I was able to spend more time in God’s Words.

When I was thinking about this parable, there were similarities.  Whether it is a white collar job or a blue collar job, we both worked about the same amount of hours per day.   Both jobs are stressful, the former has more mental stress and the latter has more physical stress.   The white collar job requires high education and the blue collar job require experiences.   Yet the more education you have, the higher rate of pay you get. 

Not always so.  As with me, my high education disqualified me for many employment because of being “over qualified”.   In this economic time, to have a job is a blessing.

The workers who worked all day for the same pay as the one who worked a couple of hours for the same rate of pay were envious.  How many times we get envious of those who gets better pay than we do?

The ones who did not accept the offer the first time around ended up wishing that they had employment and were getting hungry as well as thirsty.  They were simply not ready to accept the offer. 

As time goes by, the offer became more attractive and the workers were grateful to have employment and with such a generous wage, which they did not deserve.   They did not boast about it, they just accepted the pay. 

The Lord is also generous with his offer as well as the landowner.  Sadly, many will wait for a better offer (job) to come along.   But the offer is free, all we have to do is believe in Him.   When we believe, we will have eternal life with the Lord.  How can it get any better than this?

Although my wages has decreased from my previous employments, I have been blessed abundantly with a lesson of humility,  dependency on God, not self and an opportunity to minister to more people through my writings and my secular employments. 

Where is your focus?  Are you focusing on what you don’t like in a job you are in?  Are you focusing on what others have and you have not?  Or is your focus on what God is doing in your life to help prepare you for what is next in the plan He has for you? 

After all, first will be last and last will be first.