So what do we have to do as tenants?   Three main things it seems to me stimulated by this parable:  look after the earch that God has created for us, listen to what he is telling us thorugh his Son and look after each other.  
Global warning has focussed our minds on the former: though it is clear from what we read and see that around the world an awful lot of abuse of the enviornment is going on.  It’s going to take time for that message to reach arunbd the world, in Brazil where the rainforest is fast disappearing or Africa where the desert is adsvancing because of the depradations of mankind.  
As for looking after each other  That presents us with choices some of us don’t want to take. The Good Samaritan is ought to be our guide.  Yet nowadays mutual suspicion has reached such a pitch that doing anything with a stranger is regarded as dangerous: we are fearful of “having a go”   We are fearful even of new friendships. We cross over to the other side of the road while paying lip service to the need for human kindness.  
I don’t mean necessarily intervening at great personal risk when someone is attacked – as happened fatally the other day in Ipswich.  I mean helping people with their daily lives in practical ways  Here’s an extract from Alan Bennett’s diary, the author, among his many other achievements on Television and with the pen,  of two hugely successful plays : The History Boys and The Madness of King George  and the man who let a tramp called Miss Shepherd live in his garden in a broken down van for 15 years.  That seems to me beyond the call of duty. 
 
 [ Diary Extract} 
The message there it seems to me is don’t judge by appearances.  Just get on with loving your neighbour whatever the shape of their face. And let’s try ot think up new ways of doing that: take Miss Shepherd for a cup of tea and bun on a cold winter’s morning.  
We’re not to old to make a difference.  “Just remember” , Charlie Brown said in one of Charles Schultz’s cartoons,  “ Just remember,  once your’e over the hill you begin to pick up speed. “
So we ask God’s blessing on our lives and the time that is left to each of us. That we too may hear the words of our Lord  “ Well done thou good and faithful servant” 
