Matthew 20:8-16
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,
saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
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Of course that the parable is not about working, or performance, or merits. It is about repentance. If you repent in your youth, good for you, if you keep walking on the good path, at the end you may enter Heaven. If you repent in your middle age, good for you, if you keep walking on the good path, at the end you may enter Heaven. If you repent in your old age, if you keep walking on the good path, at the end you may enter Heaven. If you repent on your last day, if you keep walking on the good path until your last breath, at the end you may enter Heaven. All have the same reward in the Afterlife, Heaven.
However, because we do not know the last day, we should repent every day, to make it sure that we will not be late with it, because if we are late to repent then it is too late. Even when scheduling looks complicated, timing is still essential. Just as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24:
“Watch therefore, for you don't know in what hour your Lord comes. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore also be ready, for in an hour that you don't expect, the Son of Man will come.” So, we have to be aware in the right hour.
Timing, regarding logistics as well, is almost everything. Rome had an outstanding network of paved roads, built all across the empire with bridges and viaducts, because they wanted speed up not only the trade, but to improve the marching performance of the legions. They knew that time is not only money, but in wartime it was essential to make the legions move faster from one corner of the empire to the other corner, where they were needed. Thus timing was essential. Excellent roads made the war-machine more effective but Rome still remained a slave-holder, colonizing, and wicked Empire.
In the nomad armies of the arch-enemies of the Romans, the military laws were really cruel.
We can imagine how the British army and the British navy disciplined its members before the XXIst century, how brutal methods were used, to keep military law and order, but legends have it that in the Mongol army, particularly, they had only one punishment for all kind of mistakes or breaking the martial law, and it was death. If the delinquents were lucky, the delivery of the death sentence was fast like breaking the spines of the offenders, or it might have been a slow torture of all kinds as well.
Among the yurt-dwelling nomads like the Huns, the Turks and the Mongols the military training of the man began at the age of three, riding on the back of sheep and using children’s bows and arrows.
The adult warriors, with the so called composite bows, were able to shoot on the move even at a distance of 500 meters with astonishing accuracy, and their horse armies and mounted divisions were able to execute difficult maneuvers reacting to whistle or horn signals, practiced for years by the soldiers and by they well trained horses as well.
Horse archers were able to shot 20 arrows in a minute, and if they had hundreds or thousands of warriors in their unit, they were able to answer the enemy with unimaginable amount of arrow storms like a hurricane from a distance. The effective, military level, mass horse archery as an art required perfect synchronization from the warriors and the horses, to execute difficult moves and tactics by the units and the divisions, just like the teamwork and the numbered attacking tricks on a football field, though on an exponentially multiplied level on a real battlefield.
Timing was almost everything. Accuracy in aiming, in galloping and tight timing was essential, as the whole military order depended on it. After hundreds of generations, this militarzed punctuality was almost born with the nomad or semi-nomad horse archers. The military discipline was kept by fear, and the punishment was usually more than harsh. However it worked. Until the gunpowder was invented, pending that they did not fight against each other in a civil war and they were united, this military tools and methods were eventually invincible, and the empires they created in the time of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan or Timur Lenk had the multi-continental territorial span of millions of square kilometers. Nonetheless, all of these were brutal, bloodthirsty and wicked empires, of course.
It is mentioned about the descendants of these militarized nations, when the railroad was created, and the train was scheduled to leave the station at 4 AM, they had gone to the station the night before in order to not miss the departure. Any kind of lateness was considered as a deadly sin.
In an other century, thanks God, that the-on- his- own- right- famous general of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmanuel de Grouchy, whom Napoleon appointed to lead the right wing of the whole French army, and whom he sent away to pursue a part of the German army, (he) made a fatal mistake.
On June 17, 1815, Grouchy, despite hearing the cannon sound from the nearby Battle of Waterloo, he decided to follow the retiring Germans along the route literally specified in his orders, issued by Napoleon, while the main German force and the British-Dutch armies united to crush Napoleon. He won a smart victory over the Germans on 18–19 June 1815, but it was then too late, as by the time Napoleon had already lost at Waterloo. Grouchy was too late from the decisive battle of Waterloo.
A seer just called Napoleon as a butcher, by many he was deemed at least one of the historical antichrists, so it is generally considered as a positive outcome that Napoleon lost the battle, which witnessed a fearsome quantity of loss of lives, tens of thousands.
It is incomprehensible what would have happened if the general arrives in right minute, as it happened a couple of times actually with Napoleon, when the reinforcement arrived just in time, turning the tables on the battlefield at the last moments. Timing is almost everything in a war, or even in the peril of wicked Empires like the Roman, the Mongol and the realm of Napoleon, and so on, the list is long.
Nonetheless timing is truly important, as it is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”
Regarding unfortunate or fortunate events happening to people the popular ancient saying advises us that one must be at a proper place at a proper time to be lucky, and on the other side we all know the unhappy chain of events when somebody happened to be at the wrong place in the wrong time.
The need of the right timing can be obvious even at birth.
According to the sages regarding fate that our destiny is written in the constellation of the stars like it is better to be born under a lucky star.
Although as Christians we are not the people of superstition of being subjects of beliefs in the power of the Zodiac system, however just being born effects our whole lives, concerning where we were born, in what culture, to what kind of parents, especially in what era aka when we were born.
The fate or destiny is nothing else than the consequences of our and others deeds ad behaviors. The good news is, even Buddhists agree, that there is a chance to break the chain of the sinful causes and the bad consequences, as they call it karma or even bad karma.
The Lord calls us out from the prison of fate to the freedom of the Gospel, where we change course just right into the opposite direction of greed, vanity, lust, power-thirst and domination hunger to break the chains of fate as it is written right in the Ten Commandments: “ You shall not bow down to the idols or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My Commandments. ”
Thus it is our major task to love the Lord and keep his commandments. If timing is essential, and it is, then we rather do it today than tomorrow. May God be blessed by the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
