Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We have all said it or heard someone else say, “Life is not fair.” Children and teens will say that parents or siblings are not fair when they don’t get their way. Some students may complain that their teachers aren’t fair because of all the homework assignments. Some parents may complain that their child is not being treated fairly by the teacher.

Employees can feel that they are not being treated fairly by their employer. When someone who takes care of their body and seemingly does everything right and is then diagnosed with a terminal illness, they may say that life is not fair. Even in Sacred Scripture, the way Jesus Christ rewarded Mary and ignored Martha’s complaint wasn’t, according to Martha, fair. So, we can all agree that life isn’t fair and that bad things happen to good people. But is God fair?

There is a God, an infinite, all-powerful, omnipotent, omniscient God who does not think as we think. Have you ever wondered if God values what you value, and that God cares about things you don’t care about? The prophet Isaiah, in today’s first reading, tries to correct this misapprehension. In that reading, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” Isaiah is reminding each of us today that God does not think as we think. God’s values and our values don’t always line up.

Hopefully you care and love the people in your family and those who are close to you. Of course, God is love, and He loves those people you love even more than you do. But God also loves every family, regardless of race, religion, or economic worth. Hopefully you love our country. God loves our country as well, and I trust He blesses it and guides it and every person that lives here. But God also loves every other country and all the citizens in it, and desires that all people would share the freedom and prosperity that all too often we take for granted. We love those who treat us well, who stand by us, and offer us respect. God loves those people too. But God also loves our enemies, those who have hurt us. For as wrong or misguided as they may be, they are still God’s children.

God is love, and so God loves everyone as much as He loves you. This is the wonderful challenge of today’s Gospel. When the landowner goes out to town late in the day, he finds all the workers that no one else would hire. He is left with the weakest workers, the oldest workers, the workers with hardly any skill. Here is the tough thing to understand: the landowner not only hires these workers late in the day but gives them a wage equal to everyone else who had been hard at work all day. The message for you and me is confusing from a human’s perspective. The landowner’s decision seems unfair. However, the landowner acts this way because in this parable, he represents God, who loves all people equally - the weak as well as the strong, the old as well as the young, the last as well as the first.

The value God places on every person is infinite; therefore, you are loved infinitely. But your brain is finite, which makes you not God. Our human perspective tells us that we have worked all day long and God has treated others, who have worked much less, as equals. Our brain says this is not fair. But thanks be to God, He thinks differently than we do. He doesn’t have time clocks. He sees His beloved son or daughter, and He can’t help but love you. God is calling us to set aside our pride and arrogance and turn to the mind and heart of the One who loves us perfectly. For His ways are not our ways, and the only way is to take Christ’s hand and let Him extract us from our dilemmas with His strength and grace. For if we let God be God, He will give us everything that we could ever want or need.

God Bless.

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