Just in His Presence

I was reading in Luke, and I came to the story about Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10), a story that I am fairly familiar with and I had an interesting revelation. Zaccheus, the tax-collector, saw Jesus walking through Jericho, and decides that he wants to see him. Zaccheus is a short man, and can’t see him through the crowd. This does not detour him through. He come up with a way to get around the apparent problem at hand. He run’s in front of the crowd following Jesus, and climes a sycamore tree and waits for Jesus to pass under it. Jesus knows his name, which means I think that they had met before (but he could have just known it to). Jesus tells Zaccheus that he is going to dine at his house tonight. His unwillingness to accept circumstances the way that they were and his creativity and vigor landed him a night with Jesus. A awesome story, with a lot of life applications. What I find interesting is that the first thing that he tells Jesus is that he is going to give up half of his money, and pay back everybody that he has cheated four times as much. Maybe Zaccheus heard people grumbling about Jesus going to eat with a man that is a sinner, but His response to just being in Jesus’ presence was to say I am going to make a life change. Where I was going one way, I am going to go completely in the opposite direction (the essence of the word repentance). I just find it awesome that is his response to hanging out with Jesus, and that should be our response. It seems interesting that Jesus would say that “salvation” has come to his house that day.