A laborer once worked a long season for his master and came to receive his wages. The master met him at the door with bad news. I have no money to give you. Nor cattle, nor land, nor fruit, nor clothes. I cannot pay you today. The laborer had every right to be furious. He had worked in good faith, and he was being sent home empty-handed.
But he did something remarkable, preserved in exemplum 79 of Moses Gaster's 1924 Exempla of the Rabbis, a tale the Talmud (Shabbat 127b) retells to illustrate the principle of dan l'kaf z'chut, judging every person on the side of merit. The laborer judged his master favorably. There must be some reason the master cannot pay me now, he told himself. A man of good character does not withhold wages unless something is wrong that I cannot see.
Time passed, and the truth came out. The money was tied up in a business deal and could not be touched. The cattle were pledged as collateral on a different loan. The fruit could not be given because it had not yet been tithed, and to give untithed produce as wages would have made both of them sinners. And the clothes were under a neder, a vow dedicating them to the Temple, so they were no longer the master's to distribute.
Once the entanglements cleared, the master paid the laborer in full. The Talmud makes the moral explicit. One who judges his fellow favorably is himself judged favorably by Heaven. The laborer in this story did not merely control his temper. He extended to his employer the benefit of the doubt he would want Heaven to extend to him. And Heaven, watching carefully, followed suit. In a world full of quick rages and quicker verdicts, the laborer of this exemplum is a quiet patron saint of the second glance.