Come down quickly!

"When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, 'Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.'"
Luke 19:5

One of my favorite pieces of this story (although the whole thing is a feast), is that Jesus reaches out to Zacchaeus and wants to stay with him BEFORE Zacchaeus does any changing of his ways. It was not a story of Zacchaeus repents then Jesus relents. Not one bit! All Zacchaeus does is make an effort to catch a glimpse of Jesus as he passes by. Zacchaeus makes an effort to see Jesus and that is enough for Jesus to change Zac's life forever. For some reason we seem to put it all on ourselves, that we need to do this and that for God to love us. As if! There is nothing we can do to change God's mind about us...and that is the Good News! God already loves us beyond our own imagination.  Just the same, there is nothing we can do for God not to love us. God's love toward us is absolutely not influenced by us, what we do, what we say, how we behave. God's love for us just IS. It's awesome and wonderful and can be at the top of our Thankful list this week!  Blessings to each of you and may you feel much love this Thanksgiving. May we each feel the fabulous love of God!  Love, heidi