The Father Who Was Already Running

Picture the scene the way Jesus’ first listeners would have. A small village where everyone can see everyone else’s business. A father standing at the edge of his own field, morning after morning, watching a road that has delivered nothing but disappointment for months. He’s watching. And one ordinary morning, a shape appears on the horizon that his eyes recognize.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: The Distance He Refused to Let You Close Alone

Today isn’t about a decision you need to make or a burden you’re carrying into the week. It’s about a single truth to receive: God’s love toward His people has always moved first, and moved fast, and moved before it had any reason to expect a good outcome.

H – Hear: He Was Still a Long Way Off

The Old Testament had already been describing this kind of love long before Jesus told the story. Hosea 11:8 records God saying of His unfaithful people, “My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” — the Hebrew nicham and rachamim carrying the same gut-level, parental ache as the Greek splagchnizomai Luke chooses centuries later. Jesus isn’t introducing a new character trait in God with this parable. He’s putting a human face and a pair of running legs on something Israel’s prophets had already testified to for generations: God’s compassion doesn’t sit still.

E – Exchange: The Distance You Thought You Had to Close

Every heart carries some version of the son’s plan — arrive, apologize first, hope to be received, brace for the conversation to go badly. But a father who runs before the apology is finished was never waiting to see if you’d earn the welcome. The distance we assume we have to close by our own effort was already being closed from the other direction before we ever turned around. Sit with that a moment before you rush to the next thing this truth requires of you — because it requires nothing yet. It’s only asking to be believed.

Because God’s love is like a father who runs before the apology is finished, how does that change what you believe He’s doing right now, wherever you currently feel far off?

W – Walk: One Minute Facing God, Not the Distance

Before you move into the rest of today, sit still for one minute and picture the God moving towards you, not the distance between. Let that be the image you carry into worship this morning — nothing more managed than that.

Closing question: If God’s love has already been running toward you longer than you’ve been walking toward Him, how does that change your worship this morning?