“And when they received it, they murmured continually against the householder, saying, ‘These last have spent but one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' ”
The workers who had worked all day were furious and muttered among themselves, pointing out to each other that they had worked throughout the whole day, bearing the burden of the greater part of the work, and working even when the sun was hottest. And yet this mean-minded, ungrateful rich estate owner had only paid them the same as He had paid those who had only worked from 5:00 pm to nightfall. (They ignored the fact that these others had waited hopelessly in the sun all day with only despair in their hearts). They did not consider it fair. And our hearts are so hardened that we tend to agree with them, for we all like to think in terms of what we deserve, failing to recognise that if we too got what we deserved our case would be hopeless. But the question that will now be answered is, was their attitude right? (Note that this is not a parable about wage negotiations and fairplay. It is a parable about a gracious and good Estate Owner in His dealings with unfortunates and the fact that our attitude should be the same).