Climb the Tree: Rising Above to See Clearly

There is a moment in every person's life when the crowd becomes too thick, the noise becomes too loud, and the weight of everything pressing in makes it nearly impossible to see what is right in front of you. You know something greater is passing by. You can feel it. But between you and that something greater stands everything else, the exhaustion, the doubt, the years of wandering, the voices of people who have already decided who you are and what you deserve. In those moments, there is really only one thing to do.

Climb the tree.

Forty Years of Desert and a Strategy That Made No Sense

The story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho is one that many people have heard since childhood, but familiarity has a way of stripping a story of its weight. So consider it again, slowly, and consider the people inside of it.

The Israelites had been wandering in the desert for forty years before they arrived at the walls of Jericho. Forty years. These were not symbols or metaphors, they were real people with real blisters, real hunger, real grief, and real anger. They were tired. They felt forgotten. Many of them had probably wrestled with hopelessness so long it had started to feel like home.

And then came the strategy.

In Joshua 6, God instructs Joshua to march the people around the city of Jericho once a day for six days, and seven times on the seventh day. At the sound of the trumpet, the people were to shout with everything they had, and the walls would fall flat. It was not a military strategy. It was not logical. It was the strategy of heaven, and it looked nothing like what any of them would have designed on their own.

What is worth sitting with here is the sheer human cost of executing that strategy. These were people who were already depleted. And yet they were asked to march, to keep marching, and then to find somewhere deep inside themselves a shout, not a whisper, not a half-hearted attempt, but a full-throated declaration of faith. And they did it. The walls fell. They entered in.

Before Joshua even received the battle plan, something important happened. In Joshua 5:13-15, the commander of the Lord's army appeared to Joshua with a drawn sword. Joshua asked whether this figure was for them or against them. The answer was neither, he had simply come. And then he told Joshua to remove his sandals, because the ground on which he stood was holy.

The place felt like a desert. It looked like an impossible wall. And yet it was holy ground.

The strategy of heaven rarely feels heavenly. But that does not make it any less the strategy of heaven.

A Small Man, a Sycamore Tree, and a Savior Passing Through

Jump forward roughly fourteen hundred years. Jesus enters the city of Jericho, the very city whose walls once fell flat, and he is passing through. A man named Zacchaeus wants desperately to see him. Luke 19:1-10 tells us that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, wealthy, and deeply unpopular. He was also short, and the crowd pressing in around Jesus made it impossible for him to see anything.

He had a choice. He could have stood in the back and strained his neck. He could have complained that the circumstances were not in his favor. He could have reminded himself of every reason he did not deserve a front-row view of the Messiah. Instead, he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree.

There is something almost undignified about that image. A grown man, a wealthy and prominent man, climbing a tree in public so he could catch a glimpse of someone passing by. And yet that undignified act of desperation was exactly what positioned him to be seen.

When Jesus reached that spot, he looked up. He called Zacchaeus by name. And then he said something remarkable, hurry and come down, because I must stay at your house today. Not eventually. Not when things are tidier. Today. Salvation came to Zacchaeus not because he had cleaned himself up or earned the right to be noticed, but because he was willing to rise above everything blocking his view and fix his eyes on the one who was already looking for him.

The Connection Between the Walls and the Tree

Here is what is easy to miss: Jesus did not wander into Jericho by accident. Fourteen hundred years before that moment, a people exhausted and worn thin executed a strategy they did not fully understand, and the walls of a city fell. That act of obedience, costly, confusing, and physically grueling, was part of a much longer story. It paved the way for a Savior to walk through a city and call a man down from a tree.

The strategy of heaven that you choose to execute today will pave a way for people you will never meet. The obedience that costs you something now is writing a story that extends far beyond what you can currently see.

The Invitation

Both of these stories carry the same invitation at their core. The Israelites had to position themselves to execute the strategy of heaven, even when it made no sense and their bodies were failing. Zacchaeus had to rise above everything in his line of sight so he could see his Savior clearly. In both cases, the posture came before the breakthrough.

There is an old hymn that captures it simply: turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his mercy and grace. That is what climbing the tree does. It does not erase the crowd. It does not make the circumstances disappear. It changes your vantage point so that you can see what you could not see from the ground.

Whatever desert you have been wandering through, whatever crowd has been blocking your view, whatever wall looks immovable in front of you, the invitation remains the same.

Climb the tree.

See him clearly. Look behind you and find his faithfulness. Look ahead and trust it. And when he calls your name and tells you to hurry, do not hesitate.

He has come to enter in.

---

[Section 1] label="Main" scheme=0

Climb the Tree

Climb the Tree: Rising Above to See Clearly

There is a moment in every person's life when the crowd becomes too thick, the noise becomes too loud, and the weight of everything pressing in makes it nearly impossible to see what is right in front of you. You know something greater is passing by. You can feel it. But between you and that something greater stands everything else, the exhaustion, the doubt, the years of wandering, the voices of people who have already decided who you are and what you deserve. In those moments, there is really only one thing to do.

Climb the tree.

Forty Years of Desert and a Strategy That Made No Sense

The story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho is one that many people have heard since childhood, but familiarity has a way of stripping a story of its weight. So consider it again, slowly, and consider the people inside of it.

The Israelites had been wandering in the desert for forty years before they arrived at the walls of Jericho. Forty years. These were not symbols or metaphors, they were real people with real blisters, real hunger, real grief, and real anger. They were tired. They felt forgotten. Many of them had probably wrestled with hopelessness so long it had started to feel like home.

And then came the strategy.

In Joshua 6, God instructs Joshua to march the people around the city of Jericho once a day for six days, and seven times on the seventh day. At the sound of the trumpet, the people were to shout with everything they had, and the walls would fall flat. It was not a military strategy. It was not logical. It was the strategy of heaven, and it looked nothing like what any of them would have designed on their own.

What is worth sitting with here is the sheer human cost of executing that strategy. These were people who were already depleted. And yet they were asked to march, to keep marching, and then to find somewhere deep inside themselves a shout, not a whisper, not a half-hearted attempt, but a full-throated declaration of faith. And they did it. The walls fell. They entered in.

Before Joshua even received the battle plan, something important happened. In Joshua 5:13-15, the commander of the Lord's army appeared to Joshua with a drawn sword. Joshua asked whether this figure was for them or against them. The answer was neither, he had simply come. And then he told Joshua to remove his sandals, because the ground on which he stood was holy.

The place felt like a desert. It looked like an impossible wall. And yet it was holy ground.

The strategy of heaven rarely feels heavenly. But that does not make it any less the strategy of heaven.

A Small Man, a Sycamore Tree, and a Savior Passing Through

Jump forward roughly fourteen hundred years. Jesus enters the city of Jericho, the very city whose walls once fell flat, and he is passing through. A man named Zacchaeus wants desperately to see him. Luke 19:1-10 tells us that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, wealthy, and deeply unpopular. He was also short, and the crowd pressing in around Jesus made it impossible for him to see anything.

He had a choice. He could have stood in the back and strained his neck. He could have complained that the circumstances were not in his favor. He could have reminded himself of every reason he did not deserve a front-row view of the Messiah. Instead, he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree.

There is something almost undignified about that image. A grown man, a wealthy and prominent man, climbing a tree in public so he could catch a glimpse of someone passing by. And yet that undignified act of desperation was exactly what positioned him to be seen.

When Jesus reached that spot, he looked up. He called Zacchaeus by name. And then he said something remarkable, hurry and come down, because I must stay at your house today. Not eventually. Not when things are tidier. Today. Salvation came to Zacchaeus not because he had cleaned himself up or earned the right to be noticed, but because he was willing to rise above everything blocking his view and fix his eyes on the one who was already looking for him.

The Connection Between the Walls and the Tree

Here is what is easy to miss: Jesus did not wander into Jericho by accident. Fourteen hundred years before that moment, a people exhausted and worn thin executed a strategy they did not fully understand, and the walls of a city fell. That act of obedience, costly, confusing, and physically grueling, was part of a much longer story. It paved the way for a Savior to walk through a city and call a man down from a tree.

The strategy of heaven that you choose to execute today will pave a way for people you will never meet. The obedience that costs you something now is writing a story that extends far beyond what you can currently see.

The Invitation

Both of these stories carry the same invitation at their core. The Israelites had to position themselves to execute the strategy of heaven, even when it made no sense and their bodies were failing. Zacchaeus had to rise above everything in his line of sight so he could see his Savior clearly. In both cases, the posture came before the breakthrough.

There is an old hymn that captures it simply: turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his mercy and grace. That is what climbing the tree does. It does not erase the crowd. It does not make the circumstances disappear. It changes your vantage point so that you can see what you could not see from the ground.

Whatever desert you have been wandering through, whatever crowd has been blocking your view, whatever wall looks immovable in front of you, the invitation remains the same.

Climb the tree.

See him clearly. Look behind you and find his faithfulness. Look ahead and trust it. And when he calls your name and tells you to hurry, do not hesitate.

He has come to enter in.