The Laborers' Envy

I just read part of one of Elder Holland's talks, in which he spoke of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The story goes that the Lord of the vineyard went out early in the morning, again throughout the day, and again in the late afternoon, hiring more and more workers to labor in his vineyard. At the end of the day, the Lord of the vineyard paid all of the laborers the same wage he had agreed to pay the first laborers. Those first laborers were a bit upset that the Lord was paying the latecomers the same amount, even though they had worked for less time, but Elder Holland pointed out that they hadn't been treated unfairly. They had been paid the wage they had agreed on. Whatever the Lord of the vineyard paid the others didn't really affect them.

Too often, we think too much about the welfare of others, when it exceeds our own. We sometimes get jealous of those who seem better off than we are, but their blessings really don't concern us. Instead of looking at the greener grass on the other side of the fence, we should concern ourselves with our own grass and others' grass that we can make greener. I once heard (I now can't remember where) that we should only look into others' bowls to make sure they have enough, not to check and see if they have more than us. If we have enough, then we have enough, and it really doesn't matter how much others have.

So don't worry about it. God gives all of us more blessings than we deserve, so we should try not to get too caught up with trying to make sure life is fair.