Zacchaeus: The Little Man in All of Us - The Christian Online Magazine

Zacchaeus –The Little Man in All of Us

“Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
Luke 19:9 (NIV)

As I’ve written many times, my day begins with scripture, prayer, and quiet time with God. Early last fall this routine became progressively disrupted, not by actual physical things, but by day-to-day issues. Like many people in these unsteady and often scary times, the issues ranged from health and family problems to serious concerns about the national and global environment. Set these stresses amid the Christmas season filled with its activities, and I felt fragmented and exhausted.

I awoke each morning with dread and a feeling of doom for a good reason: I wasn’t sleeping. I’d wake up around 3:00 and my mind would immediately click into action. I prayed for family, for friends dealing with these same issues, for our country, and for our world. As I prayed, I’d focus on one specific problem and then instead of drifting back to sleep, I’d think about possible scenarios over which I had no control. Eventually, I would fall into a fitful sleep. When it came time for my morning devotions, I’d try to get back on track, but instead of listening, I found my mind cluttered more and more by these thoughts and that’s when the worst happened: I lost sight of God. I don’t mean I turned my back on Him or felt He’d abandoned me. I just couldn’t feel His presence as I normally did.

One afternoon, groggy from lack of sleep and tired from trying to cram too much into an already busy day, I sat on the sofa. I thought if perhaps I got my mind wrapped around a new writing project perhaps I wouldn’t dwell so much on these negative thoughts. For a while, I’ve been writing devotions beginning with each letter of the alphabet. The letter “z” was one of a few I hadn’t tackled. I closed my eyes and asked God to send me a “z.” Zacchaeus was the first name to come to mind. I also thought of Zechariah and Zephaniah, two books from the Old Testament. Zebedee, the father of the disciples James and John, was another name that popped up. But it was Zacchaeus who snagged my attention. I remembered Zacchaeus when I was a child in Sunday school and colored the picture of him in a tree as Jesus called up to him.

Luke 19:1-9 tells the story of Zacchaeus, a tax collector in a town where Jesus was visiting. Because of the crowds and his lack of height, Zacchaeus could not see Jesus. He ran ahead of the throng of people and climbed a tall tree so he could get a better view as Jesus made His way closer. Once He was near the tree, Jesus called up to Zacchaeus for him to come down because He would be staying at his house that night. Thrilled, Zacchaeus proclaimed his gratitude and promised to give half of what he owned to the poor, and to restore four times what he may have cheated anyone out of in the past.

As I reread this story, I realized God was speaking to me through Zacchaeus. I, too, couldn’t see Jesus because of my shortness and the crowds between us. The shortness, however, had nothing to do with my actual size. My shortness came from being weighed down by earthly concerns. The crowds obstructing my view were the troublesome issues blocking my listening time.
The most important part of this story is that after Zacchaeus climbed the tree, then Jesus said, “I will be moving into your house for the night.” For me this means Jesus will return to me by dwelling in my heart. Like Zacchaeus, if I make the effort to climb upward and let Jesus manage “crowd control,” only then can He be with me.