Sarah came in from school one afternoon feeling a little grumpy.
“I wish I was a bit taller,” she announced to no-one in particular as she put her bag down.
“Oh hullo Uncle Jeff”, she added, “I didn’t see you there. We haven’t seen you for a while!”
“No I’ve been busy,” he said, “But I thought I would come over and catch up with what you young ones are up to. Anyway,” he went on, “What’s this bit about wishing you were taller?”
“I always have trouble getting my bag down off the rack on the school bus,” she said, “The taller boys always seem to push it further back than I can reach.”
“That’s too bad,” said Uncle Jeff, “I can think of another person who had trouble because he was too short, and he lived a long time ago in another country….let me tell you about him…
” The story comes from the Bible and this man’s name was Zaccheus. I heard a person the other day tell the story like this. He said that the story of Zaccheus has four ‘D’s in it and if you can remember them it might be a help when things go wrong “.
Sarah settled herself down on the couch and said, “Go on Uncle Jeff. I always like hearing your stories. What was the first ‘D’?”
“He had this great ‘Desire’ to see Jesus as he had heard so much about Him. But when he saw the huge crowd that was crowded around Him, he knew that there was no way he could even get a glimpse of Him because he was only a short little man. But he was ‘Determined’ he was going to see what He was like, From this determination, came the impetus to ‘DO’ something about it, so he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed up into a large leafy tree he knew was growing there. From there he could look down on the people as they went by, and they couldn’t see him perched up there.
The noisy crowd came closer and he could see Jesus in the middle. Then to everyone’s surprise, Jesus stopped right under the tree and looked up into it. “Zaccheus, come down!’ He called out, ‘I want to eat at your place today.’
There was a scuffle up in the tree, and the little man clambered down, and went ahead to his house. Jesus followed and the crowd waited outside for a couple of hours until both Jesus and Zaccheus came out again. Jesus held up His hand and said, ‘Today salvation has come to this house….you tell them Zaccheus…’
‘ I’ve told the Teacher that I’ve done wrong”, Zaccheus said, “and I’ve also told Him that I’m going to pay any of you back four times what I took from you wrongly’.
“ He was a ‘Different’ man after that,” Uncle Jeff went on, “He was a happy chappy now, and he was honest with his money deals. It’s like that for us too when we tell Jesus about our grumpiness, and ask Him to help us….first of all we need to have the Desire to change and then be
Determined to DO something about it. It’s only then that we can become Different in the way we feel and act!”
“I guess that’s right, “ Sarah said slowly, “We have to DO something about what we need, before God can change how we feel and act”.
“That’s right, my girl”, said Uncle Jeff, “Now let’s get this drink and you’ll feel even better!”