Is 55:6-9 / Phil 1:20-24, 27 / Mt 20:1-16
A little girl named Millie was four years old when her new brother was born. Before long she was asking her parents if sometime she could take care of the baby all by herself. At first they were hesitant, lest she drop the baby or hurt him accidentally. But as time passed and she wasn’t showing any signs of jealousy, they decided to let her have some private time with the little one in the nursery.
The door was slightly ajar, so the parents peeked around it and listened. Little Millie walked up quietly to her baby brother, put her face very close to his, and said, “Baby, tell me what God feels like. I’m starting to forget.”
That’s what Sunday’s Gospel story is about: remembering what God is like. Despite the last line, the story is not about the first coming last and the last coming first. And it’s definitely not about how to run a business! No, this story is about what God is like on the inside, and that is very, very big. So big, in fact, that there’s room in God’s heart for every one of our faces — every one!
SO big and SO full is God on the inside that his most powerful desire is to fill us with every good thing, whether we deserve it or not. And that’s the real meaning of those men in the story who only worked an hour but got a full day’s pay. They didn’t earn it. The master just wanted them to have it.
Most of what we have — most of what really counts — we didn’t earn. Most of it just fell into our laps, freely given by God who just wanted us to have it. That should tell us volumes about our very dear Father, and volumes more about how much we are cherished.
In another place in Scripture, he asks us, “Would a mother ever forget her child?” And then he answers, “Even if she does, I will never forget you.”
Once upon a time there was a little child whose mother gave him a silver coin. The child thought she gave him the coin as a reward for being good. It wasn’t so. She gave him the coin because she loved him — which he only figured out years later when he became a parent.
And so it is with every one of God’s gifts, beginning with the astonishing, unearned gift of life. He give it all because he just wants us to have it.
So relax in him. Listen to him calling you by name. Let him wrap you round and enfold you. Let him take away the hurts and the fears. Relax in the Lord. Feel his strength and know his peace. And never, never forget that YOU ARE IN HIS HEART FOREVER!
