Laboring for Eternal Wages

          I was really moved by a talk that my bishop gave today in our ward conference. He spoke about the Savior's parable of the laborers in the vineyard found in Matthew 20 (you can watch the video above), where a householder goes out at various times of the day to hire workers for his vineyard. The householder promises all of the laborers a penny, but at the end of the day, the workers who were hired in the morning feel that they have been shortchanged. They feel entitled to more money, because they have been working longer than the others. The householder, however, explains that he had promised them all a penny, and therefore no one was being treated unfairly.
          
          My bishop quoted Elder Holland's talk titled "The Laborers in the Vineyard" to help explain this parable, and I personally learned a lot from it. Elder Holland teaches that if there is any sympathy to be felt, it should be for the groups picked later in the day. The laborers who began working at 6:00 or even 9:00 a.m. did begin earlier and had to work throughout the heat of the day, but they at least had the peace of having a job. Those workers who were finally chosen to work at "the eleventh hour" (or about 5:00 p.m.) went through almost the whole day with the anxiety of not knowing whether they'd find a job or not. Elder Holland says of those picked in the eleventh hour: 

"Luck never seemed to be with them. With each visit of the steward throughout the day, they always saw someone else chosen. But just at day's close, the householder returns a surprising fifth time with a remarkable eleventh-hour offer! These last and most discouraged of laborers, hearing only they they will be treated fairly,accept work without even knowing the wage, knowing that anything will be better than nothing, which is what they have had so far. Then as they gather for their payment, they are stunned to receive the same as all the others! How awestruck they must have been and how very, very grateful! Surely never had such compassion been seen in all their working days."

This parable shows to me that the Lord is both just and merciful. Not one single blessing will be withheld from any of us just because of "luck" or "circumstance", or because we weren't picked earlier in the day. Everything that God has will be ours if we are patient and endure to the end.

          Something else that stood out to me from Elder Holland's talk was his advice to not worry about things that go on before 6:00 p.m.! Any grievance or distress that happens at 6:00 or 9:00 or 3:00 is swept up in the glorious payment at the end of the day! "The formula of faith is to hold on, work on, see it through, and let the distress of earlier hours--real or imagined--fall away in the abundance of the final reward." This is something that's really hard for me--to see past the temporary hiccups to the eternal reward. However, I know that God's grace is sufficient for ALL, even those in their eleventh hour.

"However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don't have . . . I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ's Atonement shines."

Because of Christ's Atonement, we can start over again and again and again. When we feel like everyone's passing us by and we're the last to be "picked," Christ is there to comfort us. No blessing will be denied us! His grace is sufficient. I bear my testimony of these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.