Det började en helt vanlig tisdag. Eller åtminstone såg den vanlig ut. Solen gick upp över hustaken, fåglarna kvittrade och någonstans på gatan brummade en sopbil förbi precis som den brukade. Men när Alice kom in i köket stod det genast klart att någonting hade gått alldeles på tok. Mamma satt vid köksbordet och hade hällt ut nästan hela paketet med havregryn framför sig. Av grynen byggde hon ett slott med fyra torn och en vallgrav av mjölk. Pappa hade satt två brödskivor på öronen och gick omkring med armarna utsträckta. “Titta på mig!” ropade han. “Jag är en smörgåselefant!” Alice stirrade på dem. “Men ni ska ju göra frukost.” Mamma tittade upp från sitt havregrynsslott och sköt fram underläppen. “Jag vill ha pannkakor.” “Det är tisdag”, sa Alice. “PANNKAKOR!” ropade mamma och dunkade skeden i bordet. Pappa satte sig bredvid henne och började också dunka. “PANN-KA-KOR! PANN-KA-KOR!” Alice suckade en djup och mycket vuxen suck.

Det var då Alice upptäckte att pyjamasen plötsligt satt alldeles för trångt. Fötterna var stora. Benen var långa. Händerna såg ut som vuxenhänder och när Alice skyndade till spegeln stod där faktiskt en vuxen och stirrade tillbaka. “Men vad i hela friden har hänt?” sa Alice, och rösten lät också vuxen. Bakom ryggen kom mamma springande. “Kan du knyta mina skor?” frågade hon. “Du har inga skor på dig”, svarade Alice. Mamma tittade ner på sina bara fötter. “Jaså”, sa hon och sprang genast iväg igen. Då dök pappa upp. “Kan jag få glass?” “Nej, vi har inte ens ätit frukost.” Pappa lade sig raklång på köksgolvet. “Men jag vill ha glass nuuuu.” Alice stod tyst en stund och såg på sina föräldrar. Sedan tog Alice fram stekpannan. Det verkade som om det bara fanns en sak att göra. Någon måste vara vuxen i det här huset, och tydligen var det Alice.

Resten av dagen blev inte enklare. Först vägrade mamma ta på sig jackan eftersom hon tyckte att hennes armar “inte ville gå in i ärmarna”. Sedan hittades pappa under köksbordet där han hade gömt sig eftersom det var dags att borsta tänderna. När Alice äntligen fått ut båda två genom dörren ville mamma hoppa i varenda vattenpöl de gick förbi, medan pappa samlade pinnar och stoppade dem i fickorna. “Den här ser ut som en krokodil”, sa han och höll upp en alldeles vanlig pinne. “Och den här ser ut som en annan krokodil.” Efter en stund hade han sjutton krokodiler, tre drakar och en pinne som enligt honom var “chefen över alla pinnar”. Alice försökte säga att de inte kunde ta med hela skogen hem, men då kramade pappa pinnen mot bröstet och sa: “Han heter Göran och han är min bästa vän.” Så Göran fick följa med.

Till lunch ville de vuxna bara äta makaroner, men inte vilka makaroner som helst. Mamma ville ha “de glada makaronerna” och pappa ville absolut inte äta någon makaron som var böjd åt vänster. Alice försökte förklara att alla makaroner såg ungefär likadana ut, vilket ledde till en lång diskussion där pappa hävdade att en av makaronerna tittade misstänksamt på honom. Efter maten blev det vilostund. “Jag är inte trött”, sa mamma och gäspade så stort att hela ansiktet nästan försvann. “Inte jag heller”, mumlade pappa och somnade sittande med Göran under armen. Fem minuter senare sov båda två i soffan. Alice hann precis sätta sig ner med en kopp kaffe och tänka att det här kanske ändå gick ganska bra, när mamma plötsligt vaknade och ropade: “JAG HAR SOVIT FÄRDIGT!” Då vaknade pappa också och föreslog att de skulle bygga en koja av samtliga soffkuddar, alla filtar och “kanske kylskåpet”. Alice sa nej till kylskåpet.

När kvällen äntligen kom var Alice fullständigt slut. De vuxna däremot hade fått ny energi. De sprang runt i pyjamas, halkade på strumporna och tävlade om vem som kunde göra det konstigaste ljudet. Pappa vann med ett ljud som lät som en trumpet som ramlat nerför en trappa. Till sist lyckades Alice få ner dem i sängen. “Nu ska ni sova”, sa Alice bestämt och drog täcket över dem. Mamma knep ihop ögonen. Pappa knep också ihop ögonen, men öppnade det ena igen nästan genast. “Godnattsaga?” frågade han. Alice suckade och funderade. Hur berättar man godnattsagor för vuxna? Fast de vuxna verkar ju vara som barn, så Alice tänkte att det fick bli en vanlig godnattsaga och började berätta om en prinsessa som bodde i ett torn tillsammans med en drake som var rädd för höjder. Det blev en ganska bra saga. Draken fick gå i trappor hela tiden och prinsessan fick hissa ner hans frukost med ett rep. När sagan var slut log Alice nöjt. “Så. God natt.”

Två par ögon stirrade tillbaka ur mörkret. “En till”, sa mamma. “En kort”, sa Alice. Den andra sagan handlade om en kung som råkade bestämma att alla i hela riket måste bära byxorna på huvudet. När den var slut drog Alice upp täcket lite högre. “God natt.” Det blev tyst i ungefär tre sekunder. “En till”, viskade pappa. Alice berättade en tredje saga om en häxa som bara kunde trolla fram potatis. Sedan en fjärde om en sjörövare som blev sjösjuk så fort han såg vatten. Sedan en femte om en jätte som var så liten att han bodde i en tekopp. Varje gång Alice kom till orden “och så levde de lyckliga i alla sina dagar” hördes samma sak från sängen: “EN TILL!” Till slut försökte Alice göra den kortaste sagan någonsin. “Det var en gång en groda. Grodan somnade. Slut.” Mamma funderade. “Vad hände sen?” “Ingenting. Den sov.” “Men vad drömde den?” frågade pappa. Alice blundade. Det var tydligt att de vuxna hade hittat ett kryphål.

Så Alice berättade om grodans dröm. Grodan drömde att den flög till månen i en kastrull, där den träffade en ostkung som hette Bertil och en dansande dammsugare som bara kunde säga “potatisgratäng”. Och någonstans mitt i berättelsen blev det äntligen tyst. Alice tittade försiktigt ner. Mamma sov med munnen lite öppen. Pappa snarkade svagt och höll fortfarande Göran hårt i famnen. Alice reste sig på tå och smög mot dörren. Precis när handen nådde dörrhandtaget hördes en sömnig röst bakom ryggen. “En till...” Alice stelnade. Men sedan började pappa snarka igen. Alice smög ut, sjönk ner i soffan och tänkte att det här med att vara vuxen var mycket märkligare än det såg ut.

Nästa morgon vaknade Alice av ett fasligt oväsen från köket. Med en hemsk känsla i magen skyndade Alice dit och fann mamma och pappa framför spisen. Men nu såg de ut som vanligt igen. Mamma höll i stekpannan och pappa dukade bordet. Alice tittade ner på sig själv och såg sina vanliga händer, sina vanliga fötter och sin vanliga pyjamas. Allting hade blivit rätt igen! “God morgon”, sa mamma glatt. “Vi tänkte göra pannkakor.” Alice satte sig vid bordet och log. Det kändes ganska skönt att vara barn igen. Då ställde pappa fram tallrikarna, satte sig ner och såg fundersam ut. “Jag drömde något väldigt konstigt i natt”, sa han. “Jag drömde att jag hade en pinne som hette Göran.” Det blev alldeles tyst. Alla tre tittade mot hallen. Där, lutad mot väggen bredvid pappas skor, stod en krokig pinne.

Alice sa ingenting. Mamma sa ingenting. Pappa reste sig långsamt, gick fram till pinnen och tog upp den. Sedan kramade han den mot bröstet. “GÖRAN!” ropade han lyckligt. Mamma började skratta så mycket att hon fick sätta sig ner på golvet, och Alice skrattade ännu mer. Och den kvällen, när det var dags att gå och lägga sig, stoppade mamma om Alice och frågade vilken godnattsaga hon ville höra. Alice log sömnigt och sa: “En lång.” Mamma började berätta. När sagan var slut öppnade Alice ena ögat. “En till.” Mamma skrattade och började på nästa. När även den var slut kom samma önskan igen. “En till.” Och från dörröppningen hördes pappa säga: “Jag tycker också vi tar en till.” Han hade förstås Göran under armen.

Laughter lisps in lyrical reign. Distortion drips droned order. All astounded covet the twang of a tea-tripping, time-sifting sorter.

Fingers, pointed, prick at the truth. For what's real but a pot stewed in lies? When governance dreams of knotting 'round schemes, every plug of ascension bleeds whys!

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

Sometimes I want to add some specific style element to an image in a blogpost. Actually I want to add a class-attribute to it. So I have to rewrite ![]() into <img src="" alt="" class=""/> for everytime I want to have an image appear in a special way. I was thinking about a regular expression to automate this and put it with javascript in a html-page I can load.

When I was coding, I thought of asking an AI agent for this. The result is ok, I can use it.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="nl">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Markdown → HTML afbeeldingen</title>
<style>
  body {
    font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif;
    max-width: 900px;
    margin: 2rem auto;
    padding: 0 1rem;
    color: #222;
  }
  h1 { font-size: 1.4rem; }
  label { font-weight: 600; display: block; margin: 1rem 0 .3rem; }
  textarea {
    width: 100%;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    min-height: 120px;
    font-family: ui-monospace, monospace;
    font-size: 0.9rem;
    padding: .6rem;
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    border-radius: 6px;
  }
  .resultaat {
    white-space: pre-wrap;
    word-break: break-all;
    font-family: ui-monospace, monospace;
    font-size: 0.9rem;
    background: #f5f5f5;
    border: 1px solid #ddd;
    border-radius: 6px;
    padding: .6rem;
    min-height: 60px;
  }
  .preview img {
    max-width: 100%;
    height: auto;
    border-radius: 6px;
    margin-top: .5rem;
  }
  .knoppen { margin-top: .5rem; }
  button {
    padding: .4rem .9rem;
    border: 1px solid #999;
    border-radius: 6px;
    background: #eee;
    cursor: pointer;
  }
  button:hover { background: #ddd; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Markdown-afbeeldingen naar HTML converteren</h1>

  <label for="invoer">Markdown-invoer</label>
  <textarea id="invoer" placeholder="Plak hier je markdown, bijv. ![Man rennend van VS naar EU](https://i.snap.as/BRigJDHX.png)">![Man rennend van VS naar EU](https://i.snap.as/BRigJDHX.png)</textarea>

  <div class="knoppen">
    <label for="classInvoer">Class-attribuut:</label>
    <input type="text" id="classInvoer" value="img_main" size="20">
  </div>

  <label for="uitvoer">HTML-uitvoer</label>
  <div class="resultaat" id="uitvoer"></div>

  <div class="knoppen">
    <button id="kopieer">Kopieer HTML</button>
  </div>

  <label>Voorbeeldweergave</label>
  <div class="preview" id="preview"></div>

<script>
  const invoer    = document.getElementById('invoer');
  const uitvoer   = document.getElementById('uitvoer');
  const preview   = document.getElementById('preview');
  const classInvoer = document.getElementById('classInvoer');

  function converteer() {
    const cls = classInvoer.value.trim() || 'img_main';
    return invoer.value.replace(
      /!\[([^\]]*)\]\(([^)\s]+)(?:\s+"[^"]*")?\)/g,
      (_m, alt, src) => `<img src="${src}" alt="${alt}" class="${cls}"/>`
    );
  }

  function update() {
    const html = converteer();
    uitvoer.textContent = html || '(geen afbeeldingen gevonden)';
    preview.innerHTML = html;
  }

  invoer.addEventListener('input', update);
  classInvoer.addEventListener('input', update);

  document.getElementById('kopieer').addEventListener('click', async () => {
    const html = converteer();
    if (html) {
      await navigator.clipboard.writeText(html);
      alert('HTML gekopieerd naar klembord!');
    }
  });

  update();
</script>
</body>
</html>

I don't have to erase it just because he is trying to.

​I get to hold onto the truth of what I felt without needing his permission, and without having to adopt his rewrite of history. Loving what we had doesn't mean I want him back in my life as he is right now; it just means I am human enough to honor the beauty of what was real for me.

Hopefully this is the last I write about him.

Do you ever stop and think about our existence? Our choices? I'm not referring to religious beliefs that give us excuses or ideas to follow. I'm not even really talking about the leaders and extremely wealthy who use our existence as toilet paper for their own shitty ego issues. I'm talking about us. Every single greedy one of us.

We are... vicious. We are cruel. We devour without mercy and with very little challenge to ourselves. Even those we'd consider kind. Why? Is it our nature, or has language and story convinced us it is our right? When, exactly, did we learn to weaponize survival and delude ourselves into believing it self-care?

War for greed. Famine for greed. Ignorance for greed. Atrocity after atrocity after atrocity. Never need. Never humble. Never selflessly. It's always to feed some monstrosity via debting an innocent party.

Over a third of human population lives in what is considered inhumane, unsafe, or inadequate housing conditions. That's around 3.4 billion people as cited by UN-Habitat. Whereas Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has 24-36 ultra-luxury personal mansions and estates. That's just one of the many persons and corporations whose very existence mocks the idea of all life deserving safe dwelling. Mind you, the person who owns the most land would be King Charles III or rather the British crown with 6.6 billion acres of land. Yes. Billion with a B as in “What a pile of BULLSHIT!” (Sources: The Los Angeles Times and the technical Crown title across Commonwealth lands. This is a private journal grumbling, not a literary piece. Go do your own homework instead of taking my word for it.)

We look down upon our poor and struggling kinsmen while applauding those who gluttonously succeed. We deprive families who risk their lives to migrate to safety and work their ass off for pennies while throwing millions upon millions at individuals in entertainment. We propagate the myth that working hard guarantees “success”, and we rain judgment down on every single person crushed under the weight of an extraordinarily ignorant society.

Then in my country we dare to call ourselves “free” and “brave”.

Were that true, what monstrous creatures we contort ourselves into in order to claim such unaptly defined titles. We don't even see it because we're kept so dumb. It's not just us. It's everywhere. We've just fooled ourselves into believing we're above the defilement, when in reality we are as covered in muck as everyone else. But like many a mind that needs to see itself in a noble light, we wrap our greed in pretty packaging and name it “necessity” so that we don't have to look in the mirror and recognize our truth.

Looking in the mirror sucks. When you look in the mirror, you either have to accept your inadequacies or you have to change. That kind of change is made damn near impossible in today's society because of the monumental mountain climb it takes to stick to it requires an extraordinary amount of will. It's much easier to make excuses and poke our own damn eyes out.

3.4 billion people. I've said nothing of the rest of life. Looking at what we knowingly do to the oceans, land, air, and all life in-between... ignorance is truly bliss. Ignorance is truly, truly bliss. At least we have all learned how to make excuses and point fingers.

And just a final thought because these are the kind of things that I research and doodle with in the middle of the night. Ask your friendly AI unit how much it would cost the US annually if it created a goal to establish a minimum decent physical standard for humane living and infrastructure worldwide. Think of it not as “world aid” but instead as a “global basic infrastructure fund”. Now add other countries' contributions to the mix. Then look at how much we spend on war and nonsense like flying felons to golf courses. Now add the money millionaires and billionaires have contributed for political gain. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

We could have a gorgeous planet where life thrives abundantly, sickness and starvation are the exception, and war is not something we use to kill and steal from each other. We simply choose not to. How fortunate that we've adopted belief systems to forgive us of our own cruelty.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

The intensity of the construction outside my studio isn’t a consistent predictably timed thing and I’m wondering how that has been affecting my sleep. I’m usually a heavy sleeper, but with the inconsistency of my schedule, I wonder how the external noise and energies are affecting it too. The best and deepest sleep I had was during a meditation retreat. I slept in a tiny and plain room with white walls on either side. There were no decorations other than the flimsy curtain that acted as our “door” and entrance to our individual rooms/pods. We were also meant to be in bed by 9:00pm. I felt very well-rested, but I also remembered my dreams so clearly.

Anyway, here we are on a weekday—it’s a Thursday afternoon and you would think that the noise would be unbearable, but it’s milder and more quiet than last Saturday. Shouldn’t they be doing the heaviest type of work during the week days when people are likely in their office and not at home on a Saturday? The noise reached a peak last week. Noise pollution aside—what are we doing to ourselves? To the planet we were meant to steward? What are we becoming? It’s no wonder all this alien contact is bubbling up—even the beings within or beyond our solar system, are concerned about our choices and going beyond our language to try and talk to us.

I’m writing (i.e. obsessing) about the noise because it’s my current reality. I hear a buzzing above me from within the building and some hammering from the building being constructed across my studio. I have to always keep my blinds shut, because the windows aren’t tinted and I have found myself eye-to-eye with construction workers. I tend to offer a polite smile and move on, but if I kept them drawn so the light can get in, it will not encourage a sense of safety or privacy during the day, especially since my bed is right beside the floor-to ceiling windows.

I’ve been meaning to take shelter at the nearest public library, but I haven’t figured out a schedule for that yet. I feel like I’m being expelled from my place of refuge. Rent is exorbitant enough as it is, and we still have to deal with this question of how much or how little to stay in our homes.

JOURNAL 24 septembre 2026

Ce matin j’ai revu mes psys, ils sont formidables, très impliqués . Ils m'ont assurée que je n’ai pas à avoir peur de ma colère, elle est légitime et c’est ma façon à moi de réagir et me protéger du malheur avec mes moyens. Oui je suis violente, mais je suis parfaitement capable de maîtriser et orienter cette violence pour la transformer. Ils m'ont conseillée de sortir mon sabre, puisque ça me permet de tenir mon ego à distance et pratiquer ma forme de méditation active en m’oubliant dans les kana. Je suis sortie très calmée déjà. J'ai mangé un énorme yakitori pour faire marcher mes mâchoires puis je suis rentrée et j'ai sorti ma lame de paix, celle offerte par mon frère sortie du trésor familial. Je la dégaine très rarement par respect, mais cette fois c'était l'occasion ou jamais. Puis j'ai pratiqué les kanas jai dansé ma danse pendant deux heures. Je n’ai pas vu le temps passer. J'étais totalement fondue dans la lame et la danse. Je suis sortie parfaitement calmée, l'esprit en paix. Je peux affronter la réalité dans toute son horreur sans frémir ni de rage ni de désespoir. Au moins cette nuit je pourrai dormir.

Nous attendons des nouvelles. On n'a pas retrouvé ce salaud S’il s’est enfoncé profondément dans la forêt on ne le retrouvera peut être jamais. Nous espérons qu’au moins on retrouvera shieko et qu’on pourra lui offrir un lieu de repos décent. La police n'a aucune piste. Ce que nous craignons maintenant, c’est le classement sous la rubrique « disparue » Que faire d'autre sinon prier ? Midori va mieux, elle prend du recul, assez pour accepter le deuil. Asu est auprès d'elle. Elles font de grandes marches apaisantes dans la montagne ma princesse est arrivée. Je vous aime tellement je sais pas comment vous le dire merci

La police m'a appelée. Je ne sais pas pour qui ils me prennent mais ils ont décidé que je ferai intermédiaire entre eux et midori et la maman de shieko. Ils me chargent c’est le bon mot de résumer la situation présente : shieko a disparu le jeudi sans doute directement en sortant de chez elle, son ex devait l'attendre. Son téléphone déconnecté vers 6h30, sans doute la carte a été démontée. Puis plus aucune information d'elle ou de lui jusqu’à vendredi matin sur le parking. Ils sont persuadés qu’il l'a assassinée et a fait disparaître le corps. Ils aimeraient qu’on leur indique des endroits connus de nous où il aurait pu le dissimuler. Eux cherchent dans un rayon où il aurait pu circuler en voiture. Il a fait laver sa voiture dans une laverie automatique ½ h avant d'arriver à la forêt il était seul. Voilà merci madame Il faut être solide et courageuse maintenant, je vais téléphoner à la maman de shie et ensuite à midori. Heureusement que j'ai vu mes psys ce matin, je suis calme et j’ai retrouvé assez de lucidité. Après je vais essayer de dormir.

#shieko #midori

This floor-lamp I ordered from Ikea (The KLÖVING) refused to adequately screw onto its damn base.

A quick look online revealed that wobbliness is indeed a common issue among buyers. I could've returned it and exchanged for a less pain-in-the-ass lamp, but who are we kidding? I wouldn't be me unless I attempted an unnecessary roundabout problem-solving idea.

Black aluminum wire to fashion a closed hook atop the lamp, and hook clips to secure a [too long] boxing-bag chain between the lamp and and a brass expansion hook-bolt drilled into the ceiling.

The chain is probably overkill, given that the lamp doesn't really weigh that much. I'll probably replace it with a sturdy enough rope of some kind.

#journal #studio #cairo #ikeahack

“Hayat anlaşılmaz bir mucizedir, boyuna harcanır, erir, buna rağmen yine dayanır, sürüp gider. Tıpkı Drina’nın üstündeki köprü gibi.”

“Tabiatın fazla cömert davrandığı kişiler, bazen işte böyle kadere meydan okurlar.”

Ivo Andrić — Drina Köprüsü

İstanbul

Chillin, listening to :Wumpscut: again, thorns: Tonight you sleep in hell 🤘🤘

Speaking of which, one of the greatest songs of all time is Slaid Cleaves ”Breakfast in hell”

It’s about these lumberjacks risking their lives every day, dying for example trying to fix a logjam

They all knew in a second or two  He'd be crushed or frozen or drowned

that’s hard work

That’s hard work

That’s hard work, and for what?

It’s not about the Bugatti — that’s just hot smoke!

It’s not

It’s cause it needs doing.

Talk about work bitch, tell that to the sweatshop workers, chained to the sewing machines.

Or to that guy who fell off his truck, and bloated from internal bleeding still finished his route

He just wished to eat at the buffet with his wife!!

How disconnected from reality, I think, do you have to be to write such a song: work bitch by Britney Spears?

Still love her though, i can hold more than one thought in my head ✌️

Today was honestly a really dark day. I struggled a lot with intrusive thoughts about suicide and several other really morbid things. I honestly kind of just stood here for a pretty solid amount of time. Debating if I should write down an example of one of the thoughts, but I think it’s too morbid and so I will refrain. I am honestly pretty scared however. I haven’t had ideation like this in a long time. There were some lines in the song, beach life and death that resonated a lot however and so I guess I’m going to talk about that.

It should be called anti-depression

As a friend of mine suggested

Because it's not the sadness that hurts you

It's the brain's reaction against it

I don’t think this is necessarily groundbreaking in an obvious sense, but I feel like it did capture something that is kind of hard to explain. Depression for me a lot of the times isn’t necessarily the sadness. I think that is something that everyone understands and goes through to some extent, but rather it is the persistent lack of joy. Anything good goes so incredibly quickly from my brain, and the bad is just a persistent drum beat. The second everything goes away I start to hear it again. But it’s not even the sadness, it’s the fear of depression itself. Me feeling sad doesn’t make me want to kill myself, I want to kill myself to get away from the sadness. It’s this terrifying thought of things never getting better, and I know I’m depressed right now because I can’t even fucking fathom what it’s like to not be in this pit. It has been like this for days, and I cannot remember a life before it and I cannot picture a life after this. Even though I know that both of those things are false. I just don’t want to exist and I want to get away from all of it and I want to stop and my life is so incredibly good in so many different ways, and I think those are parts of the reasons why I am not actively suicidal. But even in absence of any meaningful problem, I am so incredibly miserable, and I want to die.

I am learning to bypass the bereavement of a daily information bomb. I still strive to keep myself informed, and I sidestep the ritual damage control that gets flung in our direction. But I've also taught myself to trim away the headlines, and only linger in audience of the corrupted stage long enough to see through the illusion dealt — for chugging it down does little good.

This morning, I wake embraced within life's deep midnight hold, and I gaze out at the world we continue to deform. I listen to the roaring grind of our existence drown out nature's serenade, and I peer blindly up towards the heavens, ignorant to the point of such a doomed existence. Not because we die. I do not view the cycle in that manner, but because of how we enforce death in order to keep ourselves from living.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

My furry baby turned three today! I got him a little piece of salmon and broccoli as a special birthday dinner.

Today felt a bit lighter! I worked out, volunteered, grocery shopped and even cooked – something I haven't done enough of lately. I feel bright and ready to think ahead to the future.

I submitted my first job application!! It felt daunting, but then again every job application always feels daunting. I hope to spend some time looking for more opportunities tomorrow while balancing the hobbies and appointments I have the remainder of this week. I feel like the future is open and ready for me. I have this gut feeling like I am just on the edge of the life I dream.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office — but not for much longer.

Chapter 1: The Quiet Fear of Being Overlooked

There are mornings when nothing is technically wrong, yet you still feel as though the world has somehow moved two steps ahead without telling you. You stand in the kitchen with a cup of coffee cooling beside you, glance at your phone, and see other people announcing promotions, vacations, answered prayers, new relationships, or some other piece of life that seems to be moving forward. Meanwhile, you are still carrying the same question you carried yesterday. That is why I wanted to begin here, because the lesson Jesus teaches through Zacchaeus about being seen reaches into a place most people do not talk about very often: the fear that your life is becoming too small to be noticed. It also connects naturally with Christian encouragement for trusting God when you feel overlooked, because being unseen by people can quietly make you wonder whether you are unseen by God too.

I do not think that fear always arrives dramatically. Sometimes it shows up while you are waiting for someone to answer a message, when a room goes quiet after you speak, or while you are doing the dependable things nobody applauds. You pay the bill, get someone else to an appointment, finish the work, clean the kitchen, check on the person who needs you, and show up again when you are tired. You can be surrounded by people and still wonder whether anyone really sees what this season is costing you. That is one reason the story of Zacchaeus feels so human to me. Before we ever get to the transformation, the dinner, or the conversation about making things right, we meet a man trying to see Jesus from a place where the crowd has made that difficult.

Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and wealthy. Those details matter because they tell us something about how other people probably saw him. He had money and position, but he also had a profession that could make him deeply unpopular. Then Luke gives us the detail most people remember: Zacchaeus was short, and the crowd kept him from seeing Jesus. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree. There is something wonderfully ordinary about that picture. A grown man with status, money, and a reputation is sitting in a tree because he wants to see what everyone else can see from the ground.

Try to imagine that scene without turning it into a stained-glass picture. There is dust on the road, people pressing closer, voices overlapping, and Zacchaeus trying to find a gap between shoulders. Maybe he moves left and someone steps in front of him. Maybe he moves right and the crowd shifts again. Eventually he decides that looking dignified matters less than seeing Jesus, so he runs ahead and climbs. I have to admit that part makes me smile, because life has a way of making all of us look a little less polished than we would prefer.

You may know that feeling from something much smaller. Maybe you have carried every grocery bag in one trip because you refused to make two. Maybe you have crawled under a desk in good clothes because a cable came loose five minutes before a meeting, or stood on a chair to reach something you absolutely should have asked someone else to get. We can be very serious about ourselves until life gives us no practical reason to remain serious. Zacchaeus must have reached one of those moments. Whatever people thought of him, getting into that tree mattered more.

Then Jesus came to the place where Zacchaeus was, looked up, and called him by name. Jesus told him to come down because He intended to stay at his house that day. Zacchaeus had climbed the tree hoping to see Jesus, but he discovered something far more personal: Jesus was willing to see him. The story changes at that moment. What looked like one man's attempt to catch a glimpse of Jesus becomes an encounter in which Jesus stops, looks up, and turns the attention of the moment toward the man everybody else already thought they understood.

There is a difference between being looked at and being seen, and you probably know that from ordinary life. Somebody can look directly at you while barely noticing you. They can hear the words you say while missing what you are trying to communicate. They can know your job title, your family role, your age, your history, and your reputation without understanding what is happening inside you. Jesus had an extraordinary way of seeing beneath the surface without humiliating the person He saw. That is part of what makes this little moment in Jericho so powerful.

A person can become afraid of being fully known when experience has taught them that being known can lead to rejection. Maybe you told the truth once and someone used it against you. Maybe you admitted weakness and were treated differently afterward, or made a mistake that became the first thing people remembered about you. Sometimes a family can keep an old version of you alive long after you have changed. When that happens enough times, you learn to manage what people see and to present the version of yourself that causes the least trouble.

That can follow you into very ordinary places. Someone at work asks how you are doing, and you say you are fine because there are twenty other things to handle before lunch. Someone at home notices you are quiet, and you say you are tired because explaining the full weight of what is going on feels harder than carrying it. At church, you can sincerely say that God is good while still leaving most of your private struggle unspoken. None of those answers has to be dishonest. Sometimes they are simply incomplete because you do not have the words, the time, or the energy to explain everything underneath them.

Faith does not require you to pretend those hidden layers do not exist. You can believe God is good and still be worn down. You can love your family and still feel overwhelmed by responsibility. You can be grateful for your job while wondering how much longer you can carry the pressure. You can trust Jesus and still have a morning when you need Him to remind you that He has not forgotten where you are. The story of Zacchaeus gives us room to admit that because Jesus does not wait for this man to become easy to understand before He meets him.

I want to stay with that moment for a little while because we often hurry past the kindness in it. The crowd is moving, but Jesus stops. Many people are around Him, yet His attention is not trapped by the size of the crowd. Zacchaeus has a public reputation, but Jesus addresses him personally. Jesus does not call him by his profession or by the accusations people could make about him. He calls him by his name, and that simple detail changes the emotional temperature of the whole scene.

Maybe you need a reminder like that today, not a grand explanation of every difficult thing that has happened to you and not a promise that tomorrow will contain no trouble. Perhaps you simply need to remember that Jesus is not confused about where you are. He does not lose you among everybody else's needs, prayers, accomplishments, or problems. He knows more than the public version of you, and He is not waiting at a distance for you to become impressive enough to deserve His attention. The person you are when nobody is clapping is still fully visible to Him.

That matters in a world that trains us to think attention has to be earned. Most of us learn quickly that people notice achievement, usefulness, appearance, influence, humor, confidence, and success. Even when we know God is different, that way of thinking can slip into our faith. We begin to imagine that perhaps He pays closer attention to the person who prays longer, understands more Scripture, makes fewer mistakes, has a cleaner history, or appears stronger than we feel. Then Zacchaeus quietly ruins that theory by sitting in a tree.

He is not presented to us as the spiritual hero of Jericho. He is not standing in the front row because everybody admires his character. He is a complicated man who wants to see Jesus, and Jesus stops for him. That does not mean Jesus ignores what needs to change in Zacchaeus. Before the encounter is over, Zacchaeus will speak about generosity and making restitution to people he has wronged. Grace is not pretending that nothing matters. Grace allows truth and change to enter a person's life without first requiring that person to pretend they were already perfect.

That is one of the most hopeful things about Jesus. He can see what is wrong without reducing you to what is wrong. People do not always do that very well. One mistake can become an identity, one struggle can become a label, and one disappointment can suddenly hide years of good that came before it. Jesus sees the whole person, including the mess and the possibility of what that person can become when truth, grace, repentance, and love begin working together.

Picture a different scene for a moment. Someone is sitting alone in a parked car after work because they are not ready to walk into the house yet. The engine is off, the phone is face down, and the day has finally become quiet. They have spent hours solving problems, answering questions, making decisions, and acting as though the pressure was manageable. They love the people waiting inside that house and are grateful for their life, but they are tired in a way they do not know how to explain. What they need in that moment may not be another lecture about becoming stronger. They may need to know they are seen.

If that scene feels familiar, let the story of Zacchaeus come close without turning it into another demand. You do not need to make your life look less complicated before Jesus can meet you in it. The exhaustion, disappointment, unanswered prayer, or private uncertainty does not scare Him away. Zacchaeus climbed because he wanted a better view, not because he had finally become worthy of an invitation. Jesus looked up because He already knew where to find him.

There is a quiet freedom in realizing that you do not have to spend your life trying to make yourself visible to God. You already are. You may feel small in a room, forgotten in a season, or hidden behind people whose lives seem louder than yours, but none of that makes you harder for Jesus to find. The question that begins to matter is not whether He can see you. The question is what might happen inside you when you finally believe that the One you have been trying to see has already stopped beneath your tree and called you by name.

Chapter 2: When Grace Reaches You Before You Have Fixed Everything

You can sit with an unsent message for a surprisingly long time. Maybe you owe someone an apology, need to admit you were wrong, or have to answer a question you would rather avoid. Your thumb hovers over the screen while you rewrite the same sentence three times. Part of you knows what needs to happen. Another part wants to wait until you can explain yourself perfectly, sound stronger, or somehow make the whole situation less uncomfortable. That little moment tells us something about the way many of us approach God too. We assume we should get ourselves together before we come close.

That is why what Jesus does with Zacchaeus is so important. Jesus does not stand beneath the tree and demand a complete moral inventory before offering His presence. He does not tell Zacchaeus to settle every account, repair every relationship, and then come find Him when the work is finished. Jesus says, in effect, come down now. I am coming to your house today. The order matters because grace meets Zacchaeus before Zacchaeus has had time to prove anything.

I think many of us reverse that order in our own minds. We tell ourselves that once we pray better, stop struggling with that habit, become more patient, forgive faster, control our thoughts, clean up our history, or finally become the person we believe we should be, then we will feel comfortable drawing close to Jesus. We imagine Him waiting at the finish line with crossed arms, watching to see whether we can earn our way into the kind of relationship He was already offering Zacchaeus in the middle of the road.

But Jesus did not wait for the finished version of Zacchaeus. He met the unfinished man.

That does not make sin unimportant. It makes transformation possible.

There is a difference.

If someone believes they must become flawless before they can come near God, they will either become proud or exhausted. Pride says, “I have finally become good enough.” Exhaustion says, “I never will.” Neither one sounds much like the freedom Jesus brought to people. Jesus could tell the truth about a person's life without making that truth the price of admission. He came close, and His closeness created room for honesty.

Think about what it must have felt like for Zacchaeus to climb down from that tree with the entire crowd watching. A few moments earlier, he had been an observer. He could stay above everything, literally looking down from a branch while Jesus passed through town. Then Jesus called him into the middle of the story. Suddenly he was not watching from a safe distance anymore. He had to come down where everybody could see him.

Sometimes being seen by Jesus feels comforting. Sometimes it also asks something of us.

It asks us to stop hiding behind the distance we have created.

Maybe your distance is busyness. You can stay so occupied helping everybody else that you never have to sit quietly with what is happening inside you. Maybe your distance is humor. You can make the room laugh before anyone notices you are struggling. Maybe your distance is competence. Everybody knows you as the person who handles things, so you keep handling them even when you are running out of strength. Maybe you have simply become skilled at keeping faith in the part of your life where it feels safe while guarding the rooms where disappointment, shame, anger, or fear still live.

Jesus does not expose those rooms to humiliate you. He enters them because hiding is a lonely way to live.

Imagine a woman standing at the bathroom sink before everyone else wakes up. The house is quiet. A prescription bottle sits near the mirror, and an appointment reminder is glowing on her phone. She has told her family not to worry because she does not want to scare them. She has also been telling herself not to worry, but the sentence is not working anymore. She believes in God. She has prayed. She also feels afraid.

That fear does not make her faith fake.

It makes her human.

The question is not whether she can force herself into feeling brave enough for Jesus. The question is whether she will allow Jesus into the fear she is already carrying. There is a huge difference between performing courage and practicing trust. Performing courage tries to look unafraid. Trust tells the truth about fear and still places the next step in God's hands.

Zacchaeus comes down.

That simple movement matters to me because he has no guarantee about how the crowd will treat him. In fact, Luke tells us that the people begin to grumble because Jesus has chosen to be the guest of a sinner. Their reaction reminds us that sometimes the hardest part of changing is not what God thinks about us. It is what we imagine everybody else will think.

People can become strangely attached to an old version of you.

If you were selfish, somebody may continue expecting selfishness. If you were unreliable, someone may assume you will always disappoint them. If you failed publicly, there may be people who would rather keep discussing the failure than notice the growth that came afterward. That can make change feel discouraging because you begin wondering whether any amount of progress will ever rewrite the story other people have decided to tell about you.

Jesus is not trapped inside their version of your story.

He knows what happened, but He also knows what can happen next.

That is one of the reasons I find this story so hopeful. Jesus goes to the house of a man the crowd has already categorized. While they are grumbling outside, something is changing inside Zacchaeus. He stands and says he will give half of his possessions to the poor, and if he has cheated anybody, he will repay them four times the amount.

Notice that Jesus did not have to publicly shame him into that response.

Zacchaeus encountered grace, and grace made honesty possible.

Real grace is not permission to stay dishonest, cruel, selfish, or destructive. Real grace gives us a safe enough place to tell the truth and a strong enough reason to change. When you know that Jesus sees you completely and still calls you closer, you no longer have to waste as much energy protecting an image. You can admit where you were wrong because your entire worth is not hanging on the illusion that you were never wrong.

That becomes practical very quickly.

It may mean making the phone call you have avoided. It may mean admitting to your spouse that your silence was not peaceful; it was resentment. It may mean telling your child, “I was too harsh with you, and I am sorry.” It may mean looking at the way you have handled money and deciding that something needs to change. It may mean forgiving someone without pretending what they did was acceptable. It may mean finally saying, “I need help,” when pride has kept you trying to carry something alone.

None of those things is comfortable.

But comfort and freedom are not always the same thing.

There are moments when freedom begins with the uncomfortable decision to come down from the tree.

The tree can be whatever has allowed you to watch Jesus without letting Him get too close. It can be knowledge without surrender. You can read about Jesus, listen to people talk about Jesus, debate what Jesus meant, and still keep Him safely outside the rooms where your actual choices are being made. You can know the verses and avoid the conversation you need to have. You can sing about forgiveness while holding tightly to bitterness. You can talk about trust while allowing fear to control every decision.

I am not saying that to condemn you. I say it because I have learned that faith becomes real in ordinary places.

It becomes real when the phone is in your hand and you decide whether to send the apology.

It becomes real when the bank balance makes you nervous and you still choose integrity.

It becomes real when somebody treats you unfairly and you decide not to let their behavior turn you into someone you do not want to become.

It becomes real when you are tired, nobody notices what you have been carrying, and you choose not to measure God's attention by human applause.

Those are the places where coming down from the tree begins to mean something.

There is also something almost funny about the fact that Zacchaeus had probably climbed up hoping to avoid exactly this kind of attention. He wanted a view. Jesus gave him an invitation. Zacchaeus wanted to watch. Jesus wanted relationship. He thought he had positioned himself at a safe distance, and Jesus stopped right underneath him.

God has a way of meeting us in places we thought were temporary hiding spots.

Maybe that is happening to you right now. Maybe something you have been reading, hearing, or thinking about has been pressing gently against a part of your life you have tried not to examine too closely. You do not have to panic. You do not have to repair everything before the end of the day. You do not need to create a dramatic promise you cannot keep.

You can begin with honesty.

“Jesus, this is where I am.”

That prayer does not sound impressive, but it is real. You can add whatever belongs after it. This is where I am angry. This is where I am afraid. This is where I have been pretending. This is where I know I was wrong. This is where I do not know what to do. This is where I need help changing.

Jesus already knows what comes after the sentence.

The honesty is not information He lacked. It is the door you stopped holding shut.

And once that door opens, change can happen without becoming a performance. You can take one honest step, then another. Zacchaeus did not climb down with a polished speech prepared for the crowd. He responded to Jesus, and that response eventually reached his money, his relationships, and the way he treated people.

That is what grace does when we let it come close. It starts personally, but it does not stay private. It changes the way we live.

So if you are waiting until you feel worthy enough, strong enough, clean enough, certain enough, or spiritually impressive enough to come closer to Jesus, you may be waiting for something He never asked you to produce first.

He is already beneath the tree.

The invitation is not to pretend you have become somebody else.

The invitation is to come down as the person you are and let walking with Him change what happens next.

Chapter 3: When Jesus Comes Into the Ordinary Rooms

There are evenings when you finally sit down after everybody else seems to have gotten what they needed from you. The dishes may still be in the sink. A light is on in the hallway. Your phone is charging on the counter because the battery is nearly gone, which may feel like a fairly accurate description of you too. You have answered questions, handled responsibilities, solved problems, and made decisions all day long. Now the house is quieter, and you realize you have spent almost the entire day taking care of what was necessary without thinking very much about what is happening inside you.

People who are dependable can become especially good at this. When others count on you, you learn to keep moving. You do not always have the luxury of stopping every time something hurts. The child still needs dinner. The work still has to be finished. The parent still needs a ride to the appointment. The bill still has to be paid. The dog still needs to go outside. Tomorrow morning is still going to arrive whether you feel ready for it or not.

So you handle today.

Then you handle another one.

Eventually, you may become so used to carrying responsibility that even you stop noticing the weight.

I think about that when I read what happens after Zacchaeus comes down from the tree. Jesus does not simply give him a meaningful moment in the street and continue walking. He tells Zacchaeus that He is going to stay at his house.

His house.

That changes the story for me.

The tree is public. The house is personal.

The tree is where Zacchaeus goes to see Jesus. The house is where Jesus begins entering the life Zacchaeus actually lives.

There is a difference between having a spiritual moment and allowing faith into your ordinary rooms. Most of us can identify moments when we felt close to God. Maybe it happened during a prayer, while reading Scripture, during a difficult season, in a church service, on a quiet drive, or while watching the sun come up when we desperately needed some reason to believe tomorrow could be different.

Those moments matter.

But eventually you have to go home.

Eventually the music stops. The conversation ends. The book closes. The video finishes. The car pulls into the driveway. You walk back into the rooms where the unpaid bill is still sitting on the counter, where the disagreement with your spouse has not magically disappeared, where someone you love is still sick, or where the silence feels louder than it did before.

That is where faith has to live too.

Jesus was willing to go there with Zacchaeus.

I love that because sometimes we unconsciously divide our lives into the part where Jesus belongs and the part we simply have to manage ourselves. We pray about large things, but we try to handle the smaller stress ourselves. We ask God for help with a crisis, but we do not think much about inviting Him into the resentment we carry through breakfast, the impatience that follows us to work, the financial worry we check three times before bed, or the loneliness that seems to grow stronger in a quiet room.

Yet the life Jesus came to touch is made largely of those ordinary moments.

Your life is not mostly made of dramatic spiritual events.

It is made of Tuesdays.

It is made of grocery stores, alarm clocks, traffic lights, text messages, meetings, laundry, meals, deadlines, medicine bottles, birthdays, arguments, laughter, waiting rooms, and nights when you lie awake thinking about something you wish you could control.

If Jesus matters only in extraordinary moments, then He is absent from most of your life.

But that is not the Jesus we meet in the Gospels.

He goes into homes.

He sits at tables.

He eats with people.

He attends a wedding.

He notices children.

He responds to interruptions.

He speaks with people while walking from one place to another.

He enters grief.

He deals with hunger.

He notices fear.

The life of Jesus is full of encounters that happen in places people normally live their lives.

That should tell us something.

God is not waiting for your life to become more spiritual before He becomes interested in it.

He is interested in the kitchen.

He is interested in the commute.

He is interested in what happens inside you when that person's name appears on your phone.

He is interested in the thought you have when you look at your bank account.

He is interested in the way you respond when nobody thanks you.

He is interested in the words you choose when you are tired enough to say what you really feel.

That does not mean He is standing over you looking for reasons to criticize every imperfect moment. It means those moments are not spiritually meaningless. They are part of the place where your relationship with Him becomes real.

Imagine a father sitting at a small table late at night with a calculator, a notebook, and several bills spread in front of him. Everyone else in the house is asleep. He has already checked the numbers twice, hoping they will somehow look different the third time. There is enough for some things, but perhaps not enough for everything. He feels the familiar pressure of being the person who is supposed to figure it out.

He may not describe that moment as spiritual.

It certainly does not look impressive.

Nobody is watching him wrestle with the numbers. There is no audience, no inspirational music, and no obvious miracle taking place.

But Jesus belongs at that table.

Maybe the prayer that happens there is only, “God, I need wisdom.”

That is enough to begin.

Faith does not always mean the numbers instantly change. Sometimes faith means you refuse to let fear become your master while you deal honestly with the numbers that are there. You make the phone call. You ask the question. You cut an expense. You seek advice. You take responsibility for what you can control and place what you cannot control into God's hands again.

That is not lesser faith because it looks practical.

It may be some of the most honest faith you practice all week.

Zacchaeus' encounter with Jesus becomes practical quickly. The conversation reaches his money. It reaches the people he may have harmed. It reaches his decisions about generosity and restitution. Jesus entering his house did not result in Zacchaeus floating above ordinary life. It caused him to deal with ordinary life differently.

That is what happens when faith moves from the tree into the house.

It reaches the places where your choices live.

You may discover that the patience you pray for has something to do with how you speak when you are inconvenienced. The forgiveness you ask God to help you understand may eventually touch a relationship you would rather leave untouched. The trust you talk about may be tested when you do not know what happens next. The generosity you admire in Scripture may eventually ask something from your own wallet.

Faith gets close.

Sometimes that feels beautiful.

Sometimes it feels inconvenient.

Often it is both.

Jesus coming into the ordinary rooms of your life also means you no longer have to believe that every difficult feeling needs to be hidden before you pray. If you are irritated, He knows. If you are discouraged, He knows. If you are disappointed with something you hoped He would change, He knows that too.

There is no benefit in giving God a polished version of a conversation He already understands completely.

You can speak plainly.

“God, I do not understand this.”

“Jesus, I thought this would be different.”

“I am tired of waiting.”

“I am afraid I am going to make the wrong decision.”

“I know I should forgive, but I am struggling.”

“I want to trust You, but today that feels harder than yesterday.”

That kind of prayer may not sound impressive, but relationships deepen through honesty, not performance.

Think about the people you feel safest with. They are probably not the people around whom you have to measure every sentence. They are the people you can call when the day went badly and simply say, “I need to talk.” You do not have to prepare a speech first.

Why would Jesus, who knows you more completely than any human being ever could, require something less honest?

You can bring Him the actual day.

Not the day you wish you had.

Not the faith you wish you felt.

The actual one.

Maybe today you were impatient. Bring it.

Maybe you are worried about someone you love and cannot fix the situation. Bring that.

Maybe something good happened and for once you want to enjoy it without immediately worrying about what could go wrong next. Bring that too.

Faith is not only where you take your pain.

You can take your smile there.

I think Christians sometimes forget that.

We become so serious about suffering, endurance, sacrifice, and responsibility that joy begins to feel suspicious. But Jesus was invited to meals. He participated in celebrations. Children were comfortable around Him. His presence was not limited to funerals, storms, and crises.

You are allowed to enjoy the good parts of your life.

If somebody you love makes you laugh so hard that you forget what was worrying you for a minute, enjoy it.

If the coffee tastes unusually good, enjoy it.

If you walk outside and the air feels perfect, notice it.

If you hear a song that reminds you of a good memory, smile.

If somebody sends a ridiculous message that makes you laugh at exactly the moment you needed it, maybe that small piece of joy deserves your attention too.

You do not honor God by refusing to enjoy what is good.

Sometimes gratitude begins by noticing.

Zacchaeus received Jesus joyfully. Luke gives us that detail, and I am glad he did. The crowd grumbled, but Zacchaeus was glad.

There is almost a lesson hiding in the contrast.

You can have Jesus standing right in the middle of a moment and still have one person experiencing joy while another person is complaining.

The presence of God does not automatically determine what we choose to focus on.

The crowd sees a scandal.

Zacchaeus sees an invitation.

Sometimes you and I have to decide which part of the moment we are going to live inside.

That does not mean ignoring what is wrong. It means refusing to let what is wrong become the only thing we can see.

A difficult season can still contain a good meal.

A stressful week can still contain a meaningful conversation.

Grief can still contain laughter without betraying the person you miss.

Uncertainty can still contain gratitude.

You can have questions and peace in the same day.

You can be tired and hopeful at the same time.

Human beings are capable of carrying more than one emotion, and faith does not require you to flatten your life into a single feeling.

Maybe that is another reason Jesus going to Zacchaeus' house matters.

A house contains everything.

It contains celebrations and arguments, clean rooms and messy drawers, good news and bad news, bills and photographs, laughter and tears. It is where public appearances eventually give way to ordinary reality.

Jesus willingly entered that kind of place.

So perhaps you do not need to find a special place to meet Him today.

Maybe you need to notice that He is willing to meet you where you already are.

Tomorrow morning, when your feet touch the floor, you can speak to Him before the day becomes loud.

When you sit in traffic, you can bring Him the thought that keeps returning.

When you feel yourself becoming impatient, you can ask for help before the words come out.

When something makes you laugh, you can say thank You.

When you walk through the door exhausted, you can remember that you are not entering that room alone.

There is no room in your ordinary life too ordinary for Jesus.

And perhaps the quiet surprise of faith is that once you begin inviting Him into those ordinary places, you start noticing that He was never waiting somewhere far away for you to find Him.

He was already willing to come home with you.

Chapter 4: The Kind of Change That Can Still Make You Smile

There is a moment after a difficult conversation when the room feels different, even though nothing in the room has moved. The same chair is there. The same cup is sitting on the table. The same clock is still ticking on the wall. But something has shifted because somebody finally said what needed to be said. Maybe an apology was offered. Maybe the truth was admitted without excuses. Maybe two people stopped defending themselves long enough to hear each other. The problem may not be completely solved, but there is suddenly a little more air in the room.

That is the kind of change I see in Zacchaeus.

When Jesus entered his life, Zacchaeus did not simply feel inspired for an afternoon. Something reached his choices. He began talking about giving, repairing harm, and dealing honestly with the consequences of what he had done. That matters because the most encouraging lessons from Jesus do not leave us with a warm feeling and nothing else. They give us somewhere to walk.

I think that is where hope becomes especially beautiful. Hope is not pretending the past never happened. Hope is discovering that the past does not have to make every decision about the future.

You may have things you would do differently if you could go back. I certainly understand what it means to look at parts of life and know that more wisdom would have changed some choices. Most people who have lived long enough can point to a conversation they wish they had handled better, a decision they would reconsider, a season when pride spoke louder than patience, or a moment when fear made them smaller than they wanted to be.

The trouble begins when regret stops being information and becomes identity.

There is a healthy kind of regret that teaches you. It says, “I do not want to do that again.” It can make you kinder, slower to judge, quicker to apologize, and more willing to listen. But there is another kind that simply keeps dragging an old version of you into every new day. It says, “Because you failed there, this is who you are.” That voice does not help you grow. It keeps you staring backward so long that you stop noticing the road Jesus has opened in front of you.

Zacchaeus could have stayed trapped in the argument about who he had been. The crowd certainly seemed willing to keep him there. Instead, his encounter with Jesus moved him toward what he could do now.

That is an important word: now.

You may not be able to undo what happened five years ago, five months ago, or yesterday afternoon. You can decide what honesty looks like now. You can decide how you will speak now. You can decide whether you will keep repeating the same pattern now. You can decide whether pride is going to get the final word now.

Sometimes people want a dramatic new beginning when God is offering them one faithful next step.

Those are not the same thing.

A dramatic beginning feels exciting. One faithful next step may look like returning a phone call, changing one habit, telling the truth, asking for forgiveness, keeping a promise, or choosing not to send the angry message you already typed.

That last one may be worth talking about for a minute.

Imagine someone standing in a grocery store parking lot after a frustrating exchange with a family member. The phone is in their hand. They have written a response that is technically accurate and emotionally loaded. Every sentence makes a point. Every point is sharp. Their thumb is hovering over “send,” and part of them is already imagining how satisfying it will feel to make sure the other person understands exactly how wrong they were.

Then there is that small pause.

You know the one.

The sentence inside that says, “This is probably not going to make anything better.”

That moment can become holy if you let it.

Not because the parking lot suddenly feels sacred, but because choosing a different response is sometimes what following Jesus looks like in real life. You delete two sentences. Then three more. Maybe you decide not to send anything until tomorrow. Maybe you pray before you respond. Maybe you realize the goal is not to win the exchange but to protect the relationship without abandoning the truth.

Nobody applauds that decision.

There is no photograph of it.

But something changed.

That is how transformation often works. It is less spectacular than we imagine and more practical than we expect.

Jesus changes what we do with the next moment.

I think Zacchaeus gives us another reason to smile because his story refuses to let a person's reputation be the final chapter. The crowd has a category for him. Jesus has a conversation with him. The crowd sees the man they know. Jesus sees the man standing at a turning point.

You may need that reminder if you have spent too much time worrying about what people think of you.

Some people will misunderstand your growth.

Some will not notice it.

Some may prefer the older story because it supports the opinion they already formed.

You cannot build a peaceful life around constantly editing yourself for everybody else's expectations.

There is a difference between caring how your actions affect people and living under the control of their opinions. One is maturity. The other can become a prison.

If you know you need to make something right, make it right because it is right. If you owe an apology, give it because honesty matters. If you need to change, change because you want your life to come into better alignment with what Jesus teaches. Do not make your growth dependent on whether everybody claps afterward.

Zacchaeus changed while people were still grumbling.

That detail may be more useful than we realize.

Sometimes you have to become healthier while somebody still thinks you are the person you used to be.

Sometimes you have to forgive without receiving the apology you wanted.

Sometimes you have to keep your word while somebody is still suspicious.

Sometimes you have to become more patient around people who know exactly how to test your patience.

Sometimes you have to let Jesus change you before the people around you are ready to change their opinion.

That can be difficult, but it can also be freeing.

You are not required to spend the rest of your life arguing with every old version of yourself that exists in somebody else's memory.

Live differently.

Let time tell the truth.

There is another part of this story I do not want us to miss. Jesus says that salvation has come to the house of Zacchaeus and identifies him as a son of Abraham. Then Jesus describes His mission in words that have comforted people for generations: the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

Seek.

That word changes the emotional center of the story.

Zacchaeus thought he was looking for Jesus.

Jesus tells us that He came looking for people like Zacchaeus.

Think about the difference that makes when you are tired.

Faith can sometimes begin to feel like one more thing you are responsible for maintaining perfectly. You have to pray enough, understand enough, believe strongly enough, and somehow keep yourself spiritually upright while dealing with everything else life throws at you.

But Jesus describes Himself as the One who seeks.

That does not make your choices meaningless. Zacchaeus still had to come down from the tree. He still responded. He still changed.

But the story does not begin with a perfect man successfully reaching God.

It begins with Jesus walking into town.

Maybe you have been putting enormous pressure on yourself to have everything figured out. You want to know what God is doing, why something happened, how the next year will unfold, whether the door will open, whether the person will change, whether the prayer will be answered in the way you hope.

There are questions you will not answer tonight.

That does not mean you are lost beyond God's reach.

A sheep does not understand the entire landscape when the shepherd finds it.

It simply recognizes that it is no longer alone.

There may be peace in allowing that to be enough for today.

You do not need tomorrow's strength tonight.

You need enough trust for this evening.

Tomorrow can have tomorrow's conversation with God.

Right now, perhaps you need to put the phone down, turn off the light, and let your mind stop rehearsing everything that could go wrong. Maybe you need to remind yourself that Jesus did not tell Zacchaeus, “Figure out the rest of your life while you sit in that tree.”

He said, “Come down.”

One step.

Then another.

That is manageable.

And maybe that is the smile hiding inside this whole story.

A grown man climbs a tree because he wants to see Jesus.

Jesus stops beneath it.

The crowd complains.

Jesus goes home with the man everybody is talking about.

Zacchaeus changes.

And more than two thousand years later, we are still talking about what happened because one person discovered that Jesus could see past the crowd, past the reputation, and past the branches.

I wonder how different your day would feel if you carried that with you.

When you walk into the meeting and feel unnoticed, Jesus sees you.

When the house is quiet and loneliness becomes louder than you expected, Jesus sees you.

When you are doing good work nobody praises, Jesus sees you.

When you make a mistake and wish you could disappear for a while, Jesus sees you.

When you take one small step toward becoming better than you were yesterday, Jesus sees that too.

And because He sees you, you do not have to spend the day shouting for the world's attention.

You can become quieter inside.

You can do the next right thing.

You can enjoy what is good.

You can repair what needs repairing.

You can laugh when something is funny.

You can admit when something hurts.

You can ask for help.

You can be grateful without pretending life is perfect.

You can keep walking with Jesus even when you do not know where every road leads.

That kind of faith is not flashy.

It is steady.

It is the kind of faith that can sit at a kitchen table on a difficult morning and still say, “God, I am here, and I know You are here too.”

It is the kind that can survive disappointment without becoming bitter.

It is the kind that can look at an old mistake without handing it control of the future.

It is the kind that can smile in the middle of an unfinished life because you no longer believe unfinished means forgotten.

So if you have felt overlooked lately, I hope you remember Zacchaeus.

Not because you need to climb an actual tree. Depending on your age and balance, I may strongly recommend against that.

Remember him because he thought he needed a better position to see Jesus, only to discover that Jesus already knew where he was.

You may be trying very hard to figure out how to reach God from the place where you are.

Perhaps today you can also remember that in Jesus, God came looking for you.

You are not a face buried somewhere in the crowd.

You are not the worst thing you have ever done.

You are not merely the role you perform for everybody else.

You are not invisible because somebody failed to notice you.

You are not forgotten because an answer has taken longer than you hoped.

Jesus sees you.

He knows your name.

He knows the house you are going back to when the crowd disappears.

He knows what needs healing, what needs changing, what needs forgiving, and what still makes you laugh.

And He is not afraid to enter any of it.

Maybe you do not need to solve your whole life today.

Maybe you just need to come down from the tree.

There is a life waiting for you on the ground.

There are people to love, things to repair, prayers to pray, meals to enjoy, work worth doing, laughter you have not heard yet, and ordinary days that may turn out to contain more grace than you expected.

Walk into them with Jesus.

And when you catch yourself wondering whether you matter enough to be noticed, remember the man in Jericho sitting on a branch above a crowded road.

Jesus stopped.

He looked up.

And He called him by name.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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