I think of the account in the gospels in the Bible of the man Zaccheus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacchaeus). He was despised by his locals for his work as cheating tax collector for the occupying Roman forces. No wonder. His life was stunted by this disgraceful stigma. His height was stunted too. He had to get a view of Jesus when Jesus passed by a crowds prevented Zaccheus seeing Jesus because Zaccheus was rather short. So Zaccheus climbed a tree to get a view. He was used to doing things out of initiative to compensate for his height and poor social stature. He reminds me of myself I hate to admit. Having worked in local government almost twenty years and been a conformer to the authorities of officialdom since school days, sucking up to teachers and to the system, I too was of low esteem in the eyes of my peers. Hated for conforming and benefiting from it, when others were unfairly treated by that system and not so able to get along with its impositions. What makes me feel I have much more in common with Zaccheus was the way Jesus treated Zaccheus and treated me too 2000 years later, that same Jesus. Zaccheus got noticed. Jesus didn’t shun him. Jesus went up to him personally and introduced Himself and then actually went along to this man’s house and gave despised Zaccheus a one-to-one lesson in the ways and power of God, converting Zaccheus and freeing him from his trap of vice and ignorance. Jesus is still like that today. He came to me in 1995, I think that was the year, and spoke a miracle into happening when I was walking in the heavy rain, me out there with a massive umbrella up. “Put down your umbrella!” Jesus said it invisibly but right inside my head with absolute authority. When I put the umbrella down in that torrential rain the rain stopped instantly. Then when I said to myself “It is the Lord!” the Lord helped my uncertainty by visiting me later in my house that night. I kind of knew it was Jesus out there in the rain but I really wanted Jesus to confirm it. I asked for a sign it was Jesus Himself. I went to bed that night and saw a dressing gown, never really used, hung on the nail on the wall. If it was Jesus, I said, let it be off the wall by the morning. In the middle of the night an extremely authoritative feeling got right inside my head waking me up. It got right through my mental defences, like the master of my soul alone could do. I so remembered that power all the years since. I woke and felt compelled to get up immediately. I simply reached out a took the dressing gown. As I took it off the wall I suddenly remembered the sign I had asked for. The Lord truly was Jesus. Wow! I knew it with a calm I had never known before. That calm returns to me just by remembering it. Jesus truly is the same Jesus as spoke to Zaccheus and calmed storms and walked on water and even did miracles after rising from the dead. This Lord is truly Jesus. The Master of my soul. Now I know what Zaccheus knew. Despised by men, and rightly so, but visited for salvation’s sake by the Lord Jesus Christ, by the kindness of God who gives Jesus these things to do, God the true Father of Jesus Christ. What a man Jesus is. A true gentleman, alive today. Alive, thankfully, forever. The same forever.
