The Prodigal Son

Is God more like a strict judge waiting to catch you failing, or a father running down the road to meet you? Jesus was being criticized for eating with 'sinners' when he told this story, and it's his most direct answer to what God is actually like toward people who have wandered.

A younger son demands his inheritance early — the ancient equivalent of telling his father he wished he were already dead — and squanders it completely. Starving and desperate, he heads home rehearsing an apology, expecting at best to be hired as a servant.

His father sees him from a distance and runs. Not toward reproach — toward reunion. Everything Jesus wanted to say about grace is compressed into that single detail: the father was already watching, already ready to run.