Be Diligent…

Almost as familiar a song as Jesus Loves Me, the song about Zacchaeus climbing up in that sycamore still rings in my ears, dozens of years after I last sang it in VBS. We all know the story that Dr. Luke recorded for us in Luke 19:1-10. We know that the Z-man was, shall we say, altitudinally-challenged, and that he planned ahead to be able to see Jesus.

As an FAA-certificated pilot, and former USAF pilot, I like a good flying story. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard very many flying stories that haven’t been good ones. Sort of redundant actually, using the words “good” and “flying” in the same phrase, but that’s not the point. Being a sap for a good story about flying, I’ve always been a fan of Larry Walters. Larry, in case the name isn’t familiar to you, was a man whose dream was to become a pilot, but couldn’t fly for the Air Force due to poor eyesight. Taking matters into his own hands — or into his own chair — he realized his dream in 1982 when he tied 42 helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair and took off on what turned out to be a 14-hour flight. Last week, Kent Couch made a similar flight, though definitely a more controlled one, from Bend Oregon to western Idaho.

Although Kent’s intention was indeed to fly across state lines, all Larry wanted to do was take a few aerial photos of his house and enjoy the view from 30 feet up for a while. These 2 men are definitely not the only men ever to fly a lawn chair, and one thing they do not have in common with Zacchaeus is the reason for their “rapid ascent to stardom”. Certainly neither Larry nor Kent claimed to have flown their lawn chair in order to see Jesus, but they were fulfilling their lifelong dream to fly. Zacchaeus, likewise, was not bound by his lack of stature but did something about it by climbing a tree to see the Savior. Also he planned ahead to achieve his goal, just as Larry and Kent did.

So Zacchaeus not only had that height thing going against him, but he didn’t have any friends either — and for good reason. If any man ever had a good excuse for not telling others about Jesus, Zacchaeus had a couple of doozies. Now we don’t know what happened to Zacchaeus after Jesus left his house that day, but he did exhibit great faith in making sure he saw Jesus in the first place, and he showed complete repentence by his promise to pay back his marks 4-fold, so my opinion is that after Jesus announced salvation had come to that house Zacchaeus was very vocal about his faith. Like Saul who became the apostle Paul, he no doubt had to prove his sincerity at first, but I’m thinking he must have been a powerful voice and an influential figure in the early church.

How do you approach situations where there’s a great door opened for you to share your faith? Do you make excuses and rationalize to yourself about how ineffective you’d be because you “don’t know enough” to teach someone else? Do you convince yourself that you’d be ineffective because of sin in your life — perhaps the life you turned from when you turned to Jesus — and that no one would believe you? Do you take full advantage of the situation, as Zacchaeus did, and openly tell others why you believe (1 Peter 3:15)?

No matter how you face those types of situations now, our prayer should always be that our light should shine so brightly that people won’t be asking what we believe; they’ll be asking how they can find the same happiness we’ve found.

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Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Bob Mathews
Filed under: Bible Characters, Faith