When God Ran

I was scrolling YouTube the other night and stumbled onto Phillips, Craig & Dean's cover of "When God Ran." I hadn't heard the song in probably fifteen years. I hit play half-distracted, expecting background noise, and by the second verse I was locked in.

If you don't know the song, it spends the first minute stacking up names for God — the ones you'd expect in a big worship anthem:

Almighty God, the great I AM / Immovable Rock, omnipotent, powerful / Awesome Lord, victorious Warrior / Commanding King of kings, mighty Conqueror…

And then it drops this:

And the only time, the only time / I ever saw Him run / Was when He ran to me.

I don't know how you hear a line like that and don't feel something crack open in your chest.

The God who spoke the whole universe into existence with a word. The God who never has to hurry, never gets tired, never runs late for anything. And the one moment the song can find Him moving fast — the only time — is the moment He's coming after a kid who blew it.

That's Luke 15, of course. The son who took the money early (which, in that culture, was basically telling his dad he wished he was dead), spent it on the wrong things in the wrong places with the wrong people, and ended up so hungry he was jealous of what the pigs were eating. A Jewish boy. In a pigpen. You can't get much lower.

He starts the long walk home rehearsing a speech. He's going to offer to be a servant. He's going to settle for the back door. He's got the whole thing worked out in his head.

He never gets to finish it.

"While he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." — Luke 15:20

Grown men in that world didn't run. It was undignified. You had to hike your robe up, you had legs showing, the whole village watching. And this dad doesn't care one bit. He'd been out on the porch. He'd been watching the road. The second he saw that skinny silhouette come over the hill, he took off.

The song puts it like this:

He took me in His arms / Held my head to His chest / Said, "My son's come home again."

I needed to hear that this week. Maybe you do too.

There is no version of your story where you've walked too far for the Father to close the distance. There is no pigpen so filthy He won't sprint into it. You don't have to nail the apology. You don't have to earn back the robe or the ring or a seat at the table. You just have to turn around.

He'll do the running.

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