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Stop comparing

Matthew 20:1–16 — The Workers in the Vineyard

Today’s Gospel is one of those passages that can initially make us uncomfortable. Jesus tells us about workers who are hired at different times throughout the day. Some work from early morning, enduring the heat and long hours, while others arrive only at the very end of the day. Yet when it is time to be paid, they all receive the same amount.

It doesn’t seem fair.

Those who had worked all day naturally felt that they deserved more than those who had worked for only an hour. And perhaps that is exactly where Jesus wants us to begin — with our very human understanding of fairness.

But the landowner had not been unjust to anyone. Those who worked from the beginning received exactly what they had agreed to receive. What offended them was not injustice, but generosity.

And that is where the deeper message lies.

God’s grace is not something we can measure, calculate or earn through comparison with someone else. We can spend so much of our lives looking at what another person has received and wondering why they have been given the same love, mercy or opportunity when perhaps we feel they have done less to deserve it.

But God does not work according to our calculations.

Whether we have followed Christ for our entire lives or have only just turned towards Him, we are equally loved. His mercy is not a limited resource, and someone else receiving His grace does not mean there is less available for us.

Perhaps this is one of the hardest lessons of faith: learning to stop comparing.

We can become so focused on what others have been given, what they have achieved, or what we believe they deserve, that we forget to recognise the gifts God has already placed in our own lives.

The Gospel reminds us that God’s generosity is not something we need to compete for. His love is not earned by being first, working the longest or proving ourselves worthy.

The workers who arrived at the eleventh hour were not loved less.

And neither are we.

God’s grace is freely given, not because we have earned it, but because He is generous.

“So the last will be first, and the first last.”

✝️

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Reflections

A friends post sparked a journaling session.

I believe that love does not fear questions. A heart rooted in god does not have to listen with fear, because truth does not need to be defended with anger or hostility.

I strongly believe we can enter into conversations with humility and compassion, seeking to understand the person before us without fear of it shaking or erasing our own conviction in our belief. We can listen, learn, and engage with traditions, beliefs, and ideas that challenge us, while still remaining faithful to the path that we have been called to walk.

For me personally, faith is not about closing myself off from questions that challenge my belief it is about allowing God to deepen my understanding through love, wisdom, and humility

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And now I see ….

One thing I’ve learned since leaving Islam and rediscovering Christianity—particularly Orthodox Christianity, which preserves the ancient faith of the early Church—is that the idea of Islam simply continuing the biblical story isn’t as straightforward as I once believed.

I wasn’t always a Muslim. I was born and raised Roman Catholic and spent over 48 years exploring different faiths and spiritual traditions. Looking back, many seemed to contain echoes of similar questions and longings, each reflecting humanity’s search for God.

When I embraced Islam, I genuinely believed it completed what had come before. But as I continued to study while I was still a Muslim, I came to a different conclusion. In fact, that growing conviction became one of the reasons I eventually left Islam.

While the Qur’an speaks respectfully of the Torah and the Gospel as revelations from God, Muhammad did not simply continue the biblical story as Christians understand it. The Qur’an rejects some of the New Testament’s central claims: Christ’s crucifixion, His resurrection, His divinity, His identity as the Son of God, and the Holy Trinity.

As a Muslim, I believed the Bible had been corrupted. Yet when I began examining the historical evidence, the early manuscripts, and the writings of the first Christians, I found myself confronted with something I could no longer ignore. The earliest Christians proclaimed the death and resurrection of Jesus centuries before Islam, and that message has remained at the heart of the Christian faith.

For me, I haven’t found a new story. I’ve come home to the oldest one—the Gospel of Jesus Christ, faithfully preserved in the Orthodox Church.

This isn’t written to attack anyone’s faith or to win an argument. It’s simply an honest account of where my search for truth has led me, and why I could no longer believe that Islam was the continuation of the Gospel as claimed, it was the attempt to change it.