Feb: Thoughts from Huw

Dear Friends,

Over Christmas and New year  I have been thinking about the ways Jesus changes people and I’ve just read the story of Zacchaeus from Luke Ch19 v1-10. I think Zacchaeus had come along that day in order to see what kind of man Jesus was. Well, by the end of the day he had got a lot more than he bargained for or hoped for. Instead of getting a mere glimpse of Jesus, he had a face to face, and a heart -to -heart encounter with him. His conversion was immediate, visible, and, I`m sure, permanent. He had a change of heart. From a Gospel viewpoint this is the most important conversion of all. It is, perhaps, harder to achieve than an intellectual conversion, and it is certainly more far reaching in its consequences. Fear can’t produce this kind of conversion. Only an encounter with love can.

In these challenging times of ours, how can we have a change of heart and learn to love one another. Just like Zacchaeus, there has to be a touching, a softening, a moving of the heart, which leads to an opening of the heart, and finally a sharing of the heart and all its riches. A harsh approach causes the heart to close and harden. A kind approach, such as Jesus adopted with Zacchaeus, causes the heart to soften and open. Nothing but the heart can change the heart.

Jesus saw that Zacchaeus’ wrongdoing was not the whole of him, and that he had within him the possibility of goodness. His conversion was a conversion to goodness. All of us stand in need of such a conversion. Each of us has the capacity that Zacchaeus had, though it may be hidden or unexpressed. Each of us stands in need of daily conversions from a closed heart to an open heart, from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.

God never writes anybody off. May this give us hope for our lives, and serve as a model in our dealings with others as we journey into the New Year.

With good wishes 
God Bless
Huw