Coming Home

The Father Who Ran: A Story About Coming Home

There is a workshop in the Netherlands inspired by an ancient Japanese art form called kintsugi. In kintsugi, broken porcelain is mended back together using gold. The result is something remarkable: the cracks, the fractures, the broken places do not disappear. Instead, they become the most beautiful part of the piece. The damage becomes ornamental. The scars become golden.

This image captures something profound about the way God deals with broken people.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 that he would gladly boast in his weaknesses, because it was precisely in those weak places that the power of Christ rested on him most fully. The broken places, the worn-out places, the places where life has torn us apart, those are not disqualifications from God's grace. They are often the very places where His glory shines through most brilliantly.

Nowhere is this truth more powerfully illustrated than in the parable of the prodigal son.
A Story Most People Think They Know
Most people are familiar with the broad strokes of this story found in Luke 15. A young man demands his inheritance early, essentially telling his father he wishes he were dead. He leaves home, wastes everything he has on reckless living, ends up starving in a pigsty, and eventually comes to his senses and returns home.
We call it the parable of the prodigal son. But that title may cause us to miss the most important character in the story. The real heart of the parable is not the son. It is the father.
The Steps That Lead Away

Before we get to the father, it is worth tracing the path the son walked, because it is a path that is painfully recognizable.
It began with dissatisfaction. He had everything he needed, yet he wanted more. He was restless, convinced that something better was waiting for him beyond the boundaries of his father's home.
Dissatisfaction gave way to desire. He wanted to experience things he had never experienced before.
He wanted Freedom. 
  He wanted to be his own man. James 1:14-15 describes this process with stark clarity, warning that when a person is drawn away by their own desires and enticed, lust conceives and brings forth sin, and sin, when it reaches its full course, brings forth death.

Desire led to deception. He believed a lie, the oldest lie in the world, that something out there in the world could satisfy what only God was designed to fill. He was convinced he was missing out on life. He was not. He was about to miss out on everything that mattered.
Then came the decision, the departure, and eventually, the disillusionment. Sin has a way of delivering exactly what it promises, for a short while. But like a drug that requires an ever-increasing dose to produce the same effect, the pleasures of a life lived apart from God eventually stop working. The money ran out. The friends disappeared. The famine came. And he found himself in a pigsty, staring at food he was not even allowed to eat, wondering how it all went so wrong.
That is the moment the scripture describes with a simple, stunning phrase: he came to himself.

Repentance is not merely feeling bad. It is a change of mind, a change of direction. It is turning around. And that is exactly what the son did. He rehearsed his confession all the way home. He was not coming back to negotiate. He was coming back broken, humbled, and ready to ask for nothing more than a servant's place in his father's house.

The Father Who Ran
Here is where the story becomes extraordinary.
While the son was still a great way off, the father saw him. This detail is not accidental. The father had been watching. He had been waiting. Every day, he had been standing at the edge of his property, shading his eyes against the sun, looking down that long dusty road, hoping.
And when he finally saw that familiar silhouette in the distance, ragged and thin and shuffling through the dust, he did not wait. He did not compose himself. He did not prepare a measured response. He ran.
In the culture of that day, a man of his standing running down the road to meet someone was itself an act of profound humility and love. He fell on his son's neck and kissed him. Before the son could even finish his rehearsed confession, the father was already calling to the servants. Bring the best robe. Put a ring on his hand. Put shoes on his feet. Kill the fatted calf. My son was dead and is alive again.

This is the picture Jesus was painting of God.
We come to Him carrying the stench of everything we have done, covered in the evidence of where we have been, and He runs to meet us. He does not wait for us to clean ourselves up. He does not require us to earn our way back. He wraps us in the robe of His righteousness, places the ring of sonship on our finger, and throws a celebration that echoes all the way to heaven. Luke 15:10 tells us there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

What Comes Next
When the father welcomed his son home, four things happened that are worth naming.
There was forgiveness, full and complete, not based on the son's performance but on the father's love. There was acceptance, a welcome back into the family not as a servant but as a son. There was restoration, a new beginning, a new identity, a new life. And there was rejoicing, celebration not just among those who loved him, but in the very presence of God.
This is what God offers every person who turns from the path they have been on and comes home.
The broken places in your life are not the end of the story. In the hands of a gracious God, they can become the most beautiful part of it. The cracks can be filled with gold.

The father is watching the road. He is waiting. And the moment He sees you coming, He will run.