On Zacchaeus
We’ll call this next couple of posts “catching up” – things I would have put on the blog a while back if I’d HAD a blog. This is a journal entry from sometime in December, but it still reflects what I feel today.
I often relate to biblical characters for different reasons. Today, I feel like Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus was separated from Jesus in several ways. First, he was at the back of a crowd pressed around Jesus, and he was a small man so he could not get through, desperately as he wanted to. Second, he was short, so he had no chance of seeing Jesus over the crowd.
But there was another barrier that kept Zacchaeus at a distance – he was a tax collector, and he knew his lifestyle was sinful. I imagine that Zacchaeus’ distance wasn’t caused so much by a physical barrier as a spiritual one – a distance he felt from Jesus that no pushing, shoving, or jumping could overcome. And so, resigned to this fact, Zacchaeus climbed a tree to watch Jesus work and speak.
I feel this spiritual barrier sometime. It’s so difficult to feel a closeness to God sometimes, and I have a tendency to feel that it’s something I’m doing. My busyness, my own sins, my emotional state, the kinds of television programs and movies I watch. Can these things keep me at a distance from God? Yes, in a way – mentally, emotionally, these things can distance me from godly thoughts and actions, and so can affect my spirit.
And so, in these times, I climb that old familiar tree. I grasp the lowest strong limb, now worn smooth by the rubbing of my hands, and pull myself up. I step from branch to branch, my feet fitting easily into well-known grooves and niches. And I make my way up to the top and wait and watch.
Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes, I sit and do the familiar things I’ve always done and ache for something to happen, but it doesn’t. I climb back down the tree to go about my business as usual. Maybe tomorrow I’ll climb and I’ll see him.
And then sometimes, I get to the top and wait and watch. And just as I’m about to give up and climb down, I hear a voice. “Come down, I am here.”
What a wonderful feeling to know that the God of the universe, and the savior of the world, is here in the room with me! He comes wished-for, but unbidden. Just because I climb the tree does not mean he is in some way made to appear. He comes at his own times and places, and finds me up in the tree – feeling distant and separated, just straining for a view of hope and warmth. He calls me down, and we eat together.
And as we do, I give up my sinful ways (for the thousandth time), and I commit to give back what I owe and then some. And once again, things are right in my world.
