Today, I leave My Rugs Behind

​I told a friend yesterday that rugs are no longer pulled out from beneath me. I told her that's because I no longer stand on rugs.

I was reflecting this morning on a group of people who had the rug pulled out from under them in the bible. In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells the story of a group of people who were hired by a landowner to work in his vineyard.

The landowner when out at 6am and agreed to pay the group he hired one denarius for a day's work. (The equivalent of a full day's wage for a common laborer or field worker). The landowner returned to the marketplace at 9am and hired another group of workers, promising to pay them what is right. At noon and 3PM and 5PM, the landowner once again went and found anyone willing to come work in the vineyard, promising again to pay them what was right.

At 6PM, the end of the work day, the landowner had the workers line up so he could pay them. He had the last ones hired line up first, which meant the group that had worked one hour was going to be paid first.

The land owner paid them a denarius.

Now, you can imagine the excitement of the workers at the back of the line, the group that got hired at 6AM and had worked 12 hours. I mean, they had to think they were about to be rich. You can just feel them doing the math in their heads.

1 X 12 = 😮💰💲

Then the first of the 6AM workers stepped forward. Exhausted from the long day or work but excited for what was about to be given to them. And the landowner paid the worker one denarius, as agreed upon when they were hired, and the very same as the one hour group.

The bible tells us, "When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’"

And the landowner responded, "‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’"

My guess is the 12-hour workers were feeling like the rug had been pulled out from beneath them. Not because it HAD BEEN, but because they created expectations in their own minds they really had no reason to create.

I have created external expectations in my life at times, that's for sure. And often, because those expectations haven't lined up with my reality, my sense of stability and fairness has been shaken. For the longest time, in the aftermath, I pointed my 'grumbling' at people in my life, and to be honest, quite often, I pointed my grumbling at God.

How can I be this good person, God, and them be that bad person, God, and yet they have all that goodness and I'm stuck with all this ugliness? Doesn't seem quite fair, God.

And God has reminded me, over and over, that although my mind can get fixated on the expectations of a merit based economy, God's economy is built on grace and on divine generosity.

God has reminded me, don't stand on the unstable rug of expectations, assumptions of fairness, and merit-based reward, but rather, find steadiness in something deeper and unshakable - grace, unconditional acceptance, a peace detached from external validation.

We can’t truly be at peace if we anchor our worth or stability to things that can shift unexpectedly. Instead, peace and security come when we "stand" on something unchangeable and unconditional—like God's generous grace and our own inner knowing that our worth doesn't hinge on outcomes or comparisons.

We are one of two people in the story that Jesus told. We are the people at the back of the line who feel cheated in some way. Or, we are the people in the back of the line celebrating a generous God, whose grace is unending.

Whose grace looks the same for the front and the back of the line.

Our peace gets robbed when we start to expect something more because of where we are standing in line.

So today, I try to avoid imagining my place in any line. But when I do, when I do find myself imagining a place in line, I do everything I can to leave my rugs behind.