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Monday, November 15, 2004
Out On a Limb
"God loves a cheerful giver," says St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 9:8.
I wonder if he had Zacchaeus in mind. His story's told in Luke 19:1-10.
Jesus and his posse paraded into Jericho, Zacchaeus' home town. Wherever Jesus went it seems a crowd would gather, to greet him and hear what he had to say about God and things.
Sure enough, the curbside crowd was so thick that Zacchaeus, a short man, couldn't see a thing. So he climbed a tree for a bird's eye view.
(I suspect the crowd purposely squeezed him out. He was not a popular guy. He worked as chief tax collector for the Roman authority, and was well-known as a traitor and a thief. Can you say "scum"?)
Anyway, he's out on a limb, in more ways than one. When Jesus gets within clear view, he stops still and looks up right at Zacchaeus. Then he calls him by name! Now everybody's looking up, waiting for the holy man to tell off Zacchaeus for all his evil ways.
Instead, Jesus calls the man front and center and invites himself to dinner at Zacchaeus' un-kosher home. Zacchaeus is even more shocked than his neighbors are. He blurts out, "Lord, if I've cheated anybody I vow here and now to repay them four times over. And half of what's left I'll give away to the poor!"
Imagine the scene a couple of days later, when Zacchaeus sidewalk superintends the Goodwill movers as they load their van with his fancy furniture, priceless china, fine paintings, Armani suits, and Gucci shoes.
The tears in his eyes aren't about what he's losing, but rivers of joy at what he's found. When Jesus accepted him just the way he was, it transformed him into what he was meant to be -- a person known and loved by God, now set free to know and love God back.
The point is this: When you know how much God has given you, no strings attached, you're eternally grateful; that kind of gratitude frees you up to be generous in something like the way God is.
"Cheerful" hardly begins to describe it. Even so, I can't help smiling ear to ear as I reach for my checkbook.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:02 AM
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