I’m sure you’ve read the parable of the workers in the vineyard–the one where the landowner goes out every three hours to bring in more workers and pays them all the same wage at the end of the day. The one in which the workers who’d been there all day thought they’d get something more than what they’d agreed to but didn’t and complained about it.

Have you ever paused to wonder which worker you are? And, for that matter, who they all represent?

This being Scripture, we can assume there are layers. But until a few weeks ago when it was the liturgical reading and hence the subject of the homily, I don’t think I’d really paused to wonder at how many layers are present. I’d always read it as something that says no matter when we come to Christ–whether it’s in childhood or on our deathbed–we all receive salvation, which is inherently equal. And that’s a perfect valid reading.

It’s also just the tip of the iceberg.

Something I’d never paid much attention to is the fact that those first workers are the ONLY workers who agree to terms before they set out. They have a formal agreement. They will do a typical day’s work (twelve hours at the time) for a typical day’s wage (one denarius). Everyone else was just told “I’ll pay you what’s fair.” They probably assumed it would be less than a denarius. But they didn’t haggle–they were just grateful for work, so they went. They trusted the landowner to provide what was right and just.

Perhaps I’m just slow, LOL, but this was the first time I realized that those first workers could also represent the Israelites–the ones who’d been given the law. They were the ones with a formal agreement with God. They were the ones told explicitly, “Do this work, earn this reward.”

The rest of us? We were told, “Come on in, pitch in, and I’ll give you what’s fair at the end of the day.” And we run on into the vineyard, grateful.

If we look at the parable not as pertaining just to individuals but to the world throughout history, then each of those workers could represent whole lands and regions as the Gospel is brought to them. Some heard it soon. Some are still waiting.

This is certainly not the only reading…but it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Because our New Covenant through Christ does not come with set terms like the Old Covenant did. But it comes with that inherent trust–we trust Him to give us what’s fair.

More, we trust Him to provide us what we need. A denarius was the daily wage because it was what a family needed to survive one day–to eat one day. That sheds a whole new light on the parable, doesn’t it? That next layer.

If the landowner hadn’t given those latecomers that wage, they wouldn’t have been able to afford to feed their families that day. But He saw something critical here–that they were willing to work, they just hadn’t yet been called to work. And He had compassion on them and provided what they needed to care for themselves and their households.

But those first workers, the ones who complained…they wanted more. And they wanted more because they saw that He had made the latecomers their equals, which was unfair.

How often do we hear that–and think that–in life? That’s not fair! 

But is it truly unfair for God to provide for ALL who need it and to give what’s needed? Those first workers didn’t need more than the daily wage. But need doesn’t negate want, does it? We always want more. The question is…would they have wanted those others to receive less? If the first workers had been the first to get their wages, they no doubt would have been fine with them…at first. But if they stuck around to see the others get the same? I imagine they’d still have complained. Which means they’d have been wishing not just that other people got less, but that they’d be wishing they got not-enough.

Think about that for a second. I know I had to sit with it.

Do I ever do that? Do I ever wish that I would receive more than what I need, even if it means someone else doesn’t…and that it means they would suffer? That they wouldn’t be able to feed their families? Is my idea of “fair” really just “what takes care of me and heck with them”? I hope not.

Then there’s the particular complaint…”we’ve been working here since sunup and bore the heat of the day!” They were complaining that the work was hard and they did it all day.

But friends, they were working in the vineyard. The vineyard. I can’t think it’s a coincidence that Jesus chose this particular kind of field, knowing as He did that He was going to make a new covenant with His blood and use a cup of wine to be that covenant, that blood. We can safely assume that when He sends us out to work in a vineyard, it’s to do the work of bringing His salvation to the world.

Yes, that work can be physically exhausting–and emotionally too. Yes, it can be hard.

But it’s also an honor. It’s a privilege. It’s a sacred calling. So never, at the end of a day (or our life) should we complain about it. Because this is Kingdom work.

That doesn’t mean we’ll always feel great or will skip our way through the hard work. But it does mean that we’re not just doing it for the reward–for the wage. We’re not just doing it for a coin in our hand or to feed our family. We’re doing it because the work itself is good. The work itself is worthy of our attention. The work itself is worth doing.

I don’t know about you, but thinking about it like that…well, that changes everything.

I’m no athlete, but occasionally I think back to gym class, and to that brief period when I ran cross-country. I remember the times when I or a friend would stumble and fall, maybe twist a knee or an ankle. I remember those flashes of pain and the thought of, “There goes the rest of today…” as I wondered if I was really injured.

And I remember my teacher or coach saying what I imagine we’ve all heard a teacher or coach saying: “Walk it off. Come on, get back up. Get moving. You’ll be fine.”

I hated hearing that. Am I the only one? In the moment when that pain is still fresh and sometimes throbbing, that command made it feel…inconsequential. Unimportant. Like what I felt was being trivialized.

And you know what made it worse? That more often than not the coach was right. A few minutes of walking, and the pain ebbed.

We hear the same thing after something like a surgery, though from a different authority and in a different way. There’s no question of the gravity of the situation. Which means that the advice isn’t just to separate true injury from minor hurt–it has a far more important purpose. After something like this, our doctors and therapists give the same advice, “Get up, get moving,” because they know through scads of scientific data that it’s necessary to healing.

The longer we lie there, unmoving, the harder it is to move.
The longer we let ourselves drift, the harder it is to get going.
The longer we don’t, the harder it is to do.

When I look back over my last few years, I keep thinking, “It’s been a lot.” My family has dealt with life-changing diagnoses (both my own and everyone else’s), mental health challenges, treatments that knock me flat, surgery upon surgery upon surgery, job loss, moving publishing companies, graduating two kids…yeah. A lot.

And I’ll be honest. There have been some days in those years when the last thing I wanted was to hear “Walk it off. Get back up. Keep moving.” There have been days when I just wanted to not. When I wanted to curl up and just…do nothing. Days when I don’t want to read, I don’t want to watch TV, I don’t want to work, I don’t want to anything. Days when life just feels so hard that what I really want is a little break from it all.

Sometimes, for an hour or two, that’s fine. Take a nap. Take a walk. Sit in silence. Sometimes, that’s exactly the respite our souls need.

Then, it’s time to get up again. To move. To do.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend who’d lost property to wildfires. Her parents had lost her childhood home, and she’d just learned that her father once again has a tumor in his brain. It’s a lot–I could certainly commiserate with that, and did. And then she said something that stuck with me: “I KNOW you understand. More than anyone else I know, you have been through an insane amount and STILL KEEP GOING. I know a lot of folks who have suffered, but the amazing difference with you is how much you just keep going. I admire you deeply and the courage that you display.”

That phrase kept coming back to me: still keep going. And as the words play through my head, I remember those moments over the last few years when I thought, “I’m so tired. I just want to…not. I don’t want to do anything. Nothing. I want to stop for a minute.”

Sometimes, when those moments hit, I just walk into the living room and sit on the couch. I close my eyes. And I soon realize that “nothing” holds no allure. It doesn’t help the overwhelm. It doesn’t revive the tired. It doesn’t fill the places that feel empty. So, instead, I follow that annoying advice from my middle school gym teacher, and I get up.

Walk it off. Get back up. Keep moving.

Now, that doesn’t mean just return to the hamster wheel. But it does mean return to the WORK–and by “the work” here, I mean the work we do for the kingdom, for the Lord. Maybe that means cooking a meal for our family. Maybe it means answering emails. Maybe it means writing a book. Maybe it means nursing others who are sick. Maybe it means teaching. Maybe it means offering a smile to someone in a checkout line. Maybe it means tending the earth and watching things grow. Or maybe, when energy permits none of those, it means sitting with the Word. Maybe it means praying. Maybe it means sitting with a loved one and talking, or just being there with them and loving them.

I don’t know what your work is. But I know that mine calls to me even in those moments of respite. I’m not good at being idle–but I will tell you that for me, intentional rest is for a purpose, and that’s to refill my creative wells so that I can continue pouring myself into my work. My writing. My designing.

Why? Because it matters.

And because it matters, it’s worth doing even when the doing is hard.

Back in sailing days, when a ship was out at sea and the wind stopped blowing, it was called “the doldrums.” I loved learning that phrase back in high school, because it’s such a perfect metaphor for some days or seasons, isn’t it? When the wind’s gone out of our sails. When going, moving, doing seems impossible because we’re lacking that force that usually speeds us on. But there was another phrase from this same era: “to sail by ash breeze.”

Ash was the wood that oars were often made of. The meaning here is that, when there’s no wind in your sails, you make the force yourself. You pick up the oars. And you move.

Don’t wait for circumstances to change–change the circumstances yourself by changing how you participate in them.

It was just about a year ago that I got the phone call that told me I had a tumor in my brain. We were at the office, packing up copies of Love in the Castle Library, which would release the next day. After getting the news, after telling my husband and crying over it, for a long moment I just stood there in his arms.

He asked something like, “What do you want to do right now? Go home? We can do this another day.”

I didn’t have to think about it long. “No,” I said. “Let’s finish up. The books still need to go out.”

He thought I was a little crazy. But I wasn’t.

Because the books still needed to go out–they represented work I believed in, work that needed to be done. Readers eagerly awaiting that story, an author who was depending on us. So I chose to obey the old advice. Get up. Keep moving. Not because it was trivial but because it wasn’t. Not because it’s what I felt like doing, but because it was what I had decided beforehand to do, and this news didn’t change the importance of it.

And it’s what I’ve been doing since then too.

I keep moving. Not because there’s no value in stillness (we all need rest!), but because the work is still good and still needs to be done. I keep moving, not in an attempt to strive and struggle my way past the circumstance, but because the circumstance doesn’t change the fact that God has blessed me with gifts and then calls me to steward them. I keep moving because I’m called to run the race until I reach the finish line, and that is, I pray, still a long way off–so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

It’s okay not to do in every moment, every hour, every day. Of course it is. There are limitations that do come with the things we go through. But even in those times, we can still do something.

Find that something. Take it in your hands. And get up. Keep moving.

Your circumstances might not change…but then, they might. Because you will.