Zacchaeus and T-Swizzle

By Kathy Deters

As anyone with a daughter under the age of 19 is probably aware, pop star royalty visited St. Louis recently. Taylor Swift, also known as Tay-Tay or T-Swizzle to her fans, was in town for two concerts. All three of my children absolutely adore her; they have her catchy lyrics committed to memory, and often revert to her pithy words of advice in dark times, when we can understand them (I continue to sing “Starbucks lovers,” despite having being told numerous times those aren’t the right words).

A frenzy about her St. Louis performances seemed to spread throughout the region as the concert dates drew near. Radio stations gave away tickets, restaurants begged her to stop by and concert-going fans worked diligently on glitter-adorned neon pink posters. The buzz reached my children’s schools, as students planned what they would wear to the concerts that night. Over the years my family has purchased her music and the perfume that carries her name, we’ve planned New Year’s Eve celebrations around watching her perform on television at Times Square and, like true fans, we’ve tracked the trials and tribulations of her romantic life like some people track their favorite sports teams. 

But, sadly, we did not purchase tickets to either of her St. Louis concerts.

Though I had expected some guilt from my kids as they watched their friends head off to the concerts, the older two children handled it well. I was surprised to find, however, that at a quarter-past bedtime, my youngest was still bouncing off the walls downstairs.

“Bedtime, sweetie,” I said to the 5-year-old.

“Nope, I need to stay up!” she replied brightly.

“For what? Everybody else is already in bed,” I pointed out.

She stopped jumping from the sofa to the recliner and looked me square in the eye.

“I think Taylor Swift might stop by to see me after her concert,” she said earnestly.

I smiled weakly. “Oh, sweetie, what makes you think that?”

“Well, she’s in town,” my daughter replied. “And I love her.”

I nodded. While the reasoning was sound, in my heart I knew that my itty bitty 5-year-old daughter was completely invisible to Taylor Swift. While I’ve heard numerous stories about this lovely young woman taking time to surprise fans, visit with sick children and reach out and connect in other amazing ways, she is, still, only one woman, and could not possibly be in the home of every young fan.

And then I heard another catchy little song in the back of my head, one that I hadn’t heard in years:

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he; he climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the lord he wanted to see.”

At those times when we feel insignificant and even invisible to the world, we are always visible to God. He is always present, always in our homes, always a part of our lives. We are never so tiny, or so quiet, that he isn’t aware of our presence. With or without glitter-covered neon posters.