Fairness

The sermon a few weeks ago was based on the story of the workers who were recruited at different times of the day - worked for different amounts of time - and were all paid the same wage. Terry asked us if we could imagine those who worked the ten hour day, watching the ones who had worked one hour receive a day's wage. Do you imagine they were excited, thinking that they would surely receive a multiple of that number, for the amount of time they had worked?  And yet, they received a day's wage - the same as the person who worked a fraction of the time they did.

It's not fair. 

I wrote about fairness yesterday. As I listened to the sermon, I thought about fairness. We can only determine what is fair by comparing what we have to what someone else has. We can only determine fairness by comparing what we have to do against what someone else has to do. Fairness is relative.

And when we say something is not fair to us, we are coveting what someone else has, aren't we?