Please read the passage before the commentary.
Then there were no trade unions. Then there was no overtime. Then there was no relief. If you would have come home hungry, sweaty, and tired, the boss would still have expected you to serve him. If you did not measure up, you would not be fired; you would be beaten, whipped, sold into another person’s power, or killed.
Now we have trade unions; now we have overtime; now we have laws to protect the workers. Now, if you have not performed your duties, you could be fired, but you have rights to protect you from some of the results of your employer’s actions. This, however, is now and that was then.
Someday we are going to come home at suppertime, hungry, sweaty, and tired, and what do we expect the boss to say? “Come feed me and you can eat later?” God, however, would tell us to sit down, make ourselves comfortable, and let him feed us. On that day we shall find out that the God whom we thought we served as though God were a slaveowner is really a God who likes to party with us. We think in terms of a long Purgatory; God has in mind an immediate heaven.
We go through life thinking that we are unprofitable servants, but God goes through eternity relishing the fact that God has made us and enjoys our presence. This is the faith the size of a tiny seed that, like a mulberry tree, is uprooted and planted in the sea of God’s gracious love and kindness.