The story in church this week was one that many people bristle at. A landowner hires workers for his vineyard, and promises them a day's wage. Some arrive early in the day, others begin later, others at noon, and still more are brought in an hour before quitting time. When the owner returns, everyone is paid the same amount. 

Outrageous. 

Although the people who toiled the longest had agreed to a day's wage, they assume that the arrival of latecomers who are given as much should spike their reward handsomely. After all they bore the heat of the day. Yet the employer reminds them that he gave them what they had bargained for. 

With one of my nine babies, I happened to be the only pregnant woman in the birth center, granted the complete attention of a qualified midwife as labor ebbed and flowed. I knew that she also worked in an inner city hospital. 

"How does this compare to a night on the floors there?"

She sighed heavily. "There are always women, and girls for that matter, lined up in the beds, in the halls, everywhere. Many have no one there with them. No partner, no mother. Just me trying to care for a dozen or twenty who are all afraid and in pain. It's exhausting."

Yet here I was, with her beside me, and a husband bringing me juice. Why did I have so much? Was I somehow of greater worth than a dozen others? Hardly. 

Trouble sets in when we are duped into playing the Not Fair game. There will always be people whose families look happier, healthier, more secure than ours. But it is based on the illusion that there is only so much joy to go around. If someone else has more, it implies that we have less. Yet we need only look up at the sky in late October to see the ridiculousness of that lie. 

Being fair is of tantamount concern in fourth grade. I remember trying to parcel out portions of dessert to hawk eyed children who seemed capable of measuring weight with their glare. But fairness loses its appeal in the complexity of life, around the time that we begin to notice not just what we deserve, but what we are gifted with.