"Papa, I am not worthy to be your son."

Jean-Robert said the sentence again. Then again. He said it on the plane from Boston. He said it in the tap-tap from Port-au-Prince. He said it under his breath on the back of a motorcycle taxi bouncing down the road to Les Cayes.

He was twenty-eight. He had not seen his father in eleven years.

At seventeen, after a loud fight, he had opened the old biscuit tin where Papa Elie, a mason, kept the money for the roof. He took all of it. He left before sunrise and never called. Not once.

Now his sister had sent a short message: "Papa asks about you every Sunday." Jean-Robert did not know what that meant. Was Papa still angry? Did he want his money? Would he even open the gate?

The motorcycle turned onto the dirt road. Far ahead, at the gate of the little house, Jean-Robert saw a gray-haired man stand up from a chair.

What happened next? Hold on to that question. Because there is a bigger question underneath it — one that every one of us carries: When I come back to God, what kind of Father will I find?

What picture do you have of God?

Close your eyes for a moment and picture God. What do you see?

Many people see a stern judge with a long list. Some see a boss who is too busy for them. Some see their own father — and for some of us, that picture hurts. A father who drank. A father who left. A father who only spoke to shout.

One night a disciple named Philip said what many of us feel:

Do you want to know what the Father is like? Look at Jesus. Look at Him touching the sick. Look at Him lifting children onto His knees. Look at Him crying at a friend's grave. Jesus said: that is what My Father is like.

The Father Himself loves you

Some people think it works like this: the Father is angry, and Jesus has to beg Him to be kind to us. Jesus said the opposite:

Read those words slowly: "the Father himself." Not only Jesus. Not only the Holy Spirit. The Father Himself.

And the most famous verse in the Bible says where the plan of salvation started:

Who gave? The Father. The cross was not Jesus changing the Father's mind. The cross was the Father and the Son giving together — because they love you.

The Father is not the problem Jesus came to fix. The Father is the One who sent Him.

God is love

The Bible does not only say God is loving, the way a person is sometimes kind. It says something deeper:

Love is not one of God's moods. It is who He is. And John adds something wonderful: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us" (1 John 4:10). He did not wait for you to love Him first. He started.

That is why John could write with wonder: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God" (1 John 3:1). Sons and daughters. Not servants. Not visitors. Children.

What God says about Himself

Long ago, Moses asked to see God's glory. God answered by telling Moses His name — who He really is:

Merciful. Gracious. Longsuffering — that means slow to get angry. Full of goodness and truth. When God describes Himself, these are the first words He chooses.

And He does not change. James calls Him "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17). People have good days and bad days. The Father does not.

Better than the best father

Jesus knew that many fathers fail. So He said this:

Think of the kindest father you have ever known. Now hear Jesus say: how much more.

And if your own father hurt you or left you, God speaks to you very gently. He uses the strongest love we know on earth — a mother with her baby — and says His love is stronger still: "Can a woman forget her sucking child...? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee" (Isaiah 49:15). The Father in heaven is not a copy of the father you had. He is the Father you always needed.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church sums up what the Bible teaches this way: God the eternal Father is the Creator, Source, Sustainer and Sovereign of all, and the same love and power we see in the Son and the Holy Spirit are in the Father too (Fundamental Belief #3).

The father who ran

Now we come to the story Jesus told — maybe the most loved story He ever told. A young man asked his father for his share of the money, left for a far country, and wasted it all (Luke 15:11-13). Hungry and alone, feeding pigs, he made a plan. He even wrote a little speech in his head: "Father, I have sinned... make me as one of thy hired servants" (Luke 15:18-19).

Then he started walking home. Watch what the father does:

The son walked. The father ran.

Look at the words. "A great way off" — the father saw him from far away. That means he was watching the road. "Had compassion" — his heart broke open. "Fell on his neck, and kissed him" — before the son was washed, before he said a word.

The son started his speech. But the father did not let him reach the part about the hired servants. He called out: bring the best robe, a ring for his hand, shoes for his feet. "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:22-24).

Jesus told this story to show us the Father. Not a father who waits with crossed arms. A Father who runs.

What happened at the gate

So what happened on that dirt road near Les Cayes?

The gray-haired man at the gate was Papa Elie. He was seventy now, with a bad knee and a cane. But when he saw who was on the back of that motorcycle, he dropped the cane and started down the road — half walking, half running, his old sandals slapping the dust.

Jean-Robert jumped off. "Papa, I am not worthy—"

He never finished. Papa Elie grabbed his son's face with both rough hands and pulled him in, right there in the road, in front of the neighbors. He was crying. He kept saying one word: "Pitit mwen. Pitit mwen." My child. My child.

That night, Jean-Robert tried again. "Papa, the money in the tin—"

The old man shook his head. "I fixed the roof long ago. Every Sunday I sat at that gate, and I asked God for only one thing: to see you come down that road before I die." Then he smiled. "Your room is still there. I never gave it away."

If an earthly father with a bad knee can run like that — how much more your Father in heaven? You do not need a perfect speech. You only need to start walking home. He is already running toward you.

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