Yesterday was a good day of worship. The worship set, while missing the guitar and the drums, was good … sort of “old school” with just the piano.  It was good to hear so many singing out from their hearts.  The set included Fields of Grace, Your Grace is Enough, and Amazed.  God’s Spirit was evident and people responded to His leading.  The text for the day was Matthew 20:1-16, which is Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers.

I was challenged as I prepared the message because I can sometimes feel like things are just not fair.  When things don’t seem to be going right,or when unwanted struggles come, like those vineyard workers who worked all day, I feel like I have been wronged.  God has pushed me over these last few weeks to really pay attention to my “expectations”.  Expectations of Him, of myself, and of others.  In my personal quest to image Jesus more clearly every day I need to be more aware of His repsonse to “expectations”.  He had every right to expect better treatment from those He came to save, to expect more acceptance from those trained up to look for the Messiah. His model of giving grace, of sharing the Father’s mercy, of demonstrating love is what He expects of me, especially since I have received so much grace and mercy and love from Him.

Listen, I get that life is often difficult, and I understand that we are often not treated fairly.  But the responsibility on us, as followers of Jesus, is to reframe the situation and look for ways to image Christ in our responses.  Not easy, but we do have an example in Jesus!

My prayer for this week is that I will allow the Holy Spirit to redirect me away from the feelings of unfairness, and point me toward Jesus.

God bless!