Reflections from Andrew Oh

Dear bros and sisters,

It's been a great start to the year 2008. Hope I'm not too late to share something from my time with God. The common quiet time has helped me to really focus on my quiet time, knowing that about 900++ disciples are doing it together, i can't help but feel it's so unifying and encouraging. (There's no way I'm gonna be left out :P ) Hasn't been writing down my thoughts on email for a long while but the campus really inspired me to get my engine going again.

Just wanna share some things that convicted me yesterday. I was reading from Matt 20 about the parable of the vineyard workers. All this while when i read this chapter i would focus on the attitudes and reaction from the workers. Yesterday i decided to dig deeper and see what i can find from the other character - owner of the estate instead.

As we all can guess the owner would most likely be God himself, he owns the vineyard, a moral/spiritual vineyard. As i read I've noticed that the owner went out early in the morning and hired idle men to come into his moral vineyard to do some productive work. He went out for a total of four times and three hours apart each time just to see if anyone would be interested to work. Why would God do something like that? It was not logical and in business sense totally crazy.

Another interesting fact I've picked up in the passage, the owner's concern was not his vineyard but the people at the marketplace. He would hire anyone who would be willing to work and he made sure that he go to the marketplace often enough to not miss anybody. I'm sure nobody does that nowadays.

A question floated into my mind - did the owner really needed the additional help? It seems to me that he was actually doing the men at the marketplace a favor by hiring them. I saw God's unconditional love in how he tirelessly reaches out to each and every one of us. He planned friends and relatives during the course of our lives to talk to us about him, he puts strangers along out paths to evangelise to us. He wants us to do productive work and get trained up instead of lazing around at the marketplace(world). He promises us a day's pay when we are done and it doesn't matter at which part of the day(our lives) we chose to respond. For disciples, this passage can be applied to certain areas of our lives that have slackened. We are lazing around, allowing the world to dominate in that area of our lives. Is God calling you to work? Is he prompting you to come into his moral vineyard/spiritual vineyard to get trained up?

At the end of the day God paid the last workers who came in first. It was because they were the most humble and grateful of all those who worked. Remember the gratitude and humility we had when we just got baptised! We have not done much, Jesus did the most and we are not worthy. God looks at our heart. Those who were there since the morning felt taken advantage of. They cannot believe that God is so unfair to pay the same salary to people who did so little work and those who did so much. We would only see it when we are those who felt we have done more and others have done less. Instead of focusing on our rewards, we should be thankful that God keeps his word. all the promises in the bible is 100% trustworthy. He does not change his standards, not for you, not for me. Have a great day!

Love Andrew