who deserves grace?

​I love telling stories. I suppose that's why I love that Jesus often used stories to teach. One of my favorite stories is one He used in the book of Matthew to teach about God's kingdom.

Jesus said God's kingdom is like someone who manages a large vineyard. The manager needs help, so he drives into town early one morning looking to hire workers for the day. The manager finds several folks who are unemployed and anxious to work. They pile in the back of his Ford F-150 after being promised a fair wage. And off to work they go.

Around lunchtime, the manager drives back to town looking for more help. Once again, several folks are looking for work. They too are offered a fair wage and off they go to join the workers hired earlier.

The manager repeats this trip to town two more times that day. Once in the afternoon and another early in the evening. Both times, additional help comes back to the vineyard after being promised a fair wage.

At the end of the work day, the manger brings the workers in to pay them. They line up - those hired last were first in line - those hired early in the morning were in the back.

The manager handed the last ones hired a buck. The workers in the back of the line saw that and thought, this is going to be our big day. If the workers who only worked a couple of hours were getting a buck, what on earth is our haul going to look like?

Well, according to Jesus' story, their haul looked like a buck. Every worker that day, no matter how long they worked, they all received the same pay. One buck. And as you can imagine, that didn't sit well with the workers who worked all day.

The point I think Jesus was making here is, when it comes to God's grace, when it comes to His love for us, God doesn't have the time or interest to work out the math. He doesn't have formulas to help him figure out who has or hasn't earned their grace and exactly how can it be fairly divided between you and me.

You know, the bible doesn't tell us, but I have to believe there was at least one worker at the back of that line who thought, you know, my family is starving. One buck will help me feed them a couple of days. I think that worker must have felt so blessed by the chance to provide for them that fair or unfair really didn't matter.

I've made a ton of mistakes in my life. I'll make more today. Some will be big. Some maybe not so much. Through them all, though, I continue to feel God's grace pouring uninterrupted into my life.

Believe me, the math and the grace formula in my life would suggest I'm not deserving of the kind of grace God has given and continues to give me. Realizing that, getting lost in the gratitude of it all, makes it really hard for me to wonder whether anyone else deserves God's grace as well.

The reality is none of us are deserving. Whether we showed up at 8AM or 5PM - none of us deserve the kind of grace God pours our way - but He keeps on pouring.

The bigger lesson in all of that, I think, is we should probably stop working out the math on each other when it comes to deciding who deserves OUR grace. Maybe we should work toward a model like God's, where we line everyone up in our lives and say I'm loving you all with the same measure of grace.

Oh, that's radical. I get it. It's radical and it's hard and pretty daggone unimaginable.

But I know this. We've been doing the math on each other for a long time. We've used the model of "deserving." We've developed practices and systems that help us determine who deserves and gets what - many if not all of which are guided by personal filters that help us decide who does and does not deserve love.

I'm a big fan of scoreboards for college football. They make Saturdays exciting.

When it comes to life, though, I'm not sure scoreboards are working out well for us.