Being short is sometimes a real inconvenience.
Zacchaeus, at least, felt plagued as he stretched up onto his toes—craned his neck—and squinted his eyes—anything to try to see through or around the crowd. Nothing worked. He was too short to see much.
This was terrible! He must see the Miracle Man who brought healing and peace wherever He went!
The crowd was too thick, though, and everyone—it seemed—was head and shoulders above Zacchaeus. No one would move for him; besides, they looked at him and growled, “Dirty tax-collector…”
There was only one thing to be done.
Zacchaeus left the crowd surrounding the Man called Jesus and ran ahead to where a sycamore spread its branches out over the road. He climbed up and shimmied out on a limb, perched precariously—but now he could see Jesus clearly.
The significance of this small man’s action is huge.
Zacchaeus was a publican, despised by the Jews because he exacted taxes from them and grew rich on their money. Yet Zacchaeus, the sinner, climbed a tree to see Jesus—a tree! What does that tree remind you of?
That’s right, the Tree of the Cross—the Tree that lifts us up to supernatural heights, to Christ Himself.
Zacchaeus, of course, could not know this as he hung in the sycamore. He was busy trying not to fall from the branches in surprise and joy because Jesus looked up at him and said, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for this day I must abide in thy house.”
Thanks to a tree—or should we say, the Tree—Christ had found a home in Zacchaeus’s newly-converted heart.
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