God is not your African Parent There is a God who does not make you wait outside the door. He does not require that you have your explanation ready, your repentance polished, your failure dressed in the right words before you are permitted back into the room. He does not sit with his back to you while you find the courage to speak. He does not make you feel the full weight of what you did before he decides whether you are worth responding to. He is not the silence after you have disappointed someone. He is not the cold that settles in a house where love is present but withheld as instrument. He is not the approval that arrives only after performance, the warmth that must be earned before it is offered, the father whose face you read before you speak to know whether today is a day you are permitted to need something. That father exists. Many of us grew up in his house. And we carried him, without knowing we were carrying him, all the way to the throne of grace, where we stood outside the door and waited, rehearsing, managing, making ourselves presentable for a God who had already seen everything and was already moving toward us. But God is not your African parent. He is the father who sees the figure on the road while it is still a long way off and does not wait for it to arrive composed. He runs. In the culture where this story was first told, dignified men did not run. Running was beneath them. He ran anyway, robe gathered, undignified, unconcerned with what the watching village thought, because the child was coming home and nothing else in that moment was of any consequence. He loves it best when you are his baby. Not the managed version. Not the version with the prepared speech and the appropriate contrition and the plan for how it will be different this time. The baby. The one who comes with full need and zero apology. The one who does not explain their crying, who does not justify their hunger, who arrives undone and expects, without sophistication, to be held. This is the thing the difficult home stole most quietly. Not just trust in people. Trust in the approach. The simple, unmanaged, unembarrassed movement toward the one who holds you, without first calculating whether you have earned the right to go. You have not earned it. You do not need to. He is already at the door. He is already running. Come as you are. Come as the baby. Come loudly, with full need, in the wrong season, without your explanation ready. He has never loved you more than in the moment you stop performing and simply come. ❤️https://https://https://