The traveler spent the morning planning his journey to the hills. He set off with a packed lunch in a small backpack. The traveler thought about the distance of the trees. They grew closer as the minutes and hours passed. He had walked for a several miles when he began to see the land rising and the hills beginning to tower over the ocean. He admired the brown and white pebbles leading up the hillside, the soft green moss on the gray rocks, the tall trees in the distance. He could faintly hear the thundering waves crashing. The trees were leafy and pea green. He sat underneath a shady tree and opened his bible to Luke 1: 37 ^“For nothing will be impossible with God.” This was a fact. He knew it but he had not lived it for some time. There were many things that people called impossible that he wanted to try and he hesitated at doing because of what they would say. He reasoned that maybe everyone has a task that they are called to do which seems impossible for them to accomplish to their friends and family. His impossible task was walking away from his secular job and going full time into ministry. They all knew him as someone who maybe one day could have done that but lately everyone knew him as just one of the boys. They reasoned that he had better leave serious religion to the professionals. Yet he knew that he was called to something greater in God’s eyes and something lesser in the eyes of humanity.

He thought about the Blessed Virgin Mary – she was not ready for what God had in store for her but – God was ready. God made her the mother of Our Jesus Christ our Lord. She was given the task of bearing the child that would change, save and one day judge the world. Yet in her mind she was only a little girl.

The traveler looked up at the winding branches of the mango tree and remembered the winding branches of Sycamore trees he had seen on his visit to Palestine. He remembered Zacchaeus and his call as well. He turned his bible to Luke 19: 1-10 “He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ²A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. ³He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴So he ran ahead and climbed a Sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ ⁶So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ ⁸Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ ⁹Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” the revelation to Mary, the mother of Jesus, by the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God.

These leaves were blowing. A lizard appeared on a low hanging branch. Zacchaeus was brought to repentance not through a community but through a direct relationship with God. There are many who are like Zacchaeus and Mary – called out by God – but not aware of their true worth, living less than lives. Then God reaches out to them personally and God then enters into intimacy with them. God was reaching out to the traveler in the stillness of this moment … he knew it … so he bowed his head closed his eyes raised his hands and prayed.