Luke 19:5-7
And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.  And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.  And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner.

Perhaps Zacchaeus was a little self-conscious.  Being small in stature, maybe he thought less of himself, and maybe others did, too.  So maybe because of that he worked hard and did whatever it took to try to build himself up, to try to become successful.  He had been dishonest, but he got rich, and maybe that made him feel better in a way, maybe at least for a time.  He got himself some position and some status to make up for what he lacked.  But that life probably wasn’t very satisfying.

And besides his own self-evaluation, the people around Zacchaeus had made their judgment of him.  He was a sinner in their eyes, and that was all.  Maybe he tried to insulate himself with his possessions and his riches and convince himself it didn’t matter what they thought.  So, he had some things working against him, but Jesus sought him out, one of the sinners He came to save.  Jesus wanted to spend some time with him, and after that, everything changed for the chief publican of Jericho.

The truth is that Jesus sees us differently than others see us and even how we sometimes see ourselves.  We may look at our physical characteristics or aspects of our personality or the circumstances of our lives and find them less than desirable.  We may be judged and hurt by how other people perceive us.  But these labels we assign to ourselves don’t define who we are.  Other people don’t define us.  Instead, let us go and seek Jesus and find out what He sees in us, because He will come to us where we are and change everything.

Truly the most important part of each of us is our heart.  When Jesus called to Zacchaeus, he answered quickly.  He got his life right.  He made some changes.  And when Jesus calls out to us, He doesn’t care what we look like or where we’ve come from or how much money we have or what other people are saying about us.  He just wants to come and spend some time with us.  He wants to be our Savior.  He doesn’t want us to be lost anymore, but to become something new in Him, so let us embrace who we are in Christ and all that He created us to be.