5:00 Workers

I remember physical education ("gym") in Junior High (and beyond). I was not and am not, very athletic. The gym teacher would form teams for volleyball, etc, by having two team captains pick their teams - one person at a time. That's great if you are chosen first. Or second, or even 15th. But I wasn't. I was chosen dead last. 

Have you ever had an experience like that? Imagine how it would make you feel.

Think about the parable of the workers who were hired to work for the landowner. Some were chosen first thing in the morning. Some were chosen at midday. Some weren't chosen until the very last hour. Imagine how those chosen last would have felt.  An Upper Room devotional called those chosen last the "5:00 workers."   Remember the rest of the parable? All of the workers were paid the same wage - the one promised to those who worked a whole day. It made those who had worked the longest angry, but imagine for a moment how it made the last ones chosen feel.  That is the experience of grace.

We are all the 5:00 workers.  We've been chosen and called to work by none other than God.  The creator of heaven and earth has called us to work for God's kingdom and to share in the riches of God's grace - not because we deserve it, but because we don't.  That's not fair; that's grace.  (Michael Vaughn (Tennessee)).