God's Generosity and a Man with an Umbrella

Matthew 20:10-12 (NLT): God’s Generosity and a Man with an Umbrella

When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more. But they, too, were paid a day’s wage. When they received their pay, they protested to the owner, ‘Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us who worked all day in the scorching heat.’

The rain came down in torrents as I crossed the parking lot. I was walking fast and holding a red umbrella, one I kept packed in my trunk. Along the way, a ragged homeless man flanked me.

“You found my umbrella,” he stated as a matter-of-fact. His hair and beard were long, gray, and matted. And his tattered clothes were soaked.

I was irritated and in a hurry to get to class, so I said, “It’s not your’s.” And I continued my power walk.

But something deep inside stopped me in my selfish tracks. An overwhelming impulse flooded me, so I turned around, jogged back, and handed him the red umbrella.

“Here is your umbrella, Sir,” I apologized. And the man skittered off, never to be seen again.

As I turned to run toward class, a fellow student stopped me. She gave me a hug and said, “I love what you just did.” Little did she know that my initial instinct was to take the umbrella, ignore the homeless man, and get to class. Little did I know that God reaches out to us in small ways that may only make sense to us years later.

I was 21-years-old and far from Christ at the time, with little or no faith. The homeless man moment was both a foreshadowing of God’s immeasurable generosity and a reminder of his omnipotent love. In that moment, God reached out to me. And there was a conflict that took place within me: My self-centeredness collided with the Holy Spirit’s prompt to put someone else first. Through God’s grace, I choose love. If I look carefully at the incident, my choice had nothing to do with my own work. I was set on passing by the needy man, for my instinct was to leave him cold and wet. It was grace that moved me to stop and give. It was grace that planted a seed of hope deep within me.

Why was my classmate in that parking lot? Why the immediate hug and recognition of love? God, in his generous love, uses us in our common contexts to be agents of his will.

In today’s Gospel, the laborers who toiled all day get miffed by the vineyard owners’ “unjust” wages. How dare the owner pay the latecomers the same wage? Jesus, moreover, narrates the long-standing laborers’ grievances: “‘Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us.” But God, like the vineyard owner, is patient and generous. It is not about the work we do but about his grace, unconditional love, generosity, and mercy -- the work he does through us, even when we may not be not mindful. God is equally generous to all who are in his vineyard.

It took me 18 more years before I entered the vineyard. God is so generous!

I pray that we all look for the moments that God both uses and reaches out to us in his endless generosity.

Have a blessed week!

Stan