Before you came home...

For the past couple of months I've been walking 4-5 mornings a week. I walk for 35-40 minutes, and I've used the time to get caught up on various sermons that I can never seem to find time to listen to during the day. As Holly and I have turned a corner of healthier living (now that we're both post 30), this has become a very enjoyable part of most of my days. Jacob is usually still asleep when I leave, and only a few times has he been awake when I walk in the door. A couple of other times he's been sitting on the porch with Shelby (the dog) waiting for me to get back.

Today, I was about halfway through my route deep into my sermon of choice when I noticed a little kid that looked a lot like my son walking toward me. Not only did it look like him, it was him. Three blocks away from our house (including a couple of turns), Jacob was walking down the sidewalk in his Old Navy Pajama pants - no shoes, no shirt, three blocks from home. I was shocked, stunned, furious, confused, relieved, and curious. I asked Jacob what he was doing. He said, "I just wanted to find you." I asked him how he knew where I was, and he proceeded to tell me my route (which he apparently memorized the one time he went with me on his scooter). I went on to say all of the fatherly things about how dangerous it was that he walked that far by himself, how he needed shoes and a shirt if he was going to walk that far, blah, blah, blah... Then I asked him why he didn't just wait for me to get home. I reminded him and reassured him that Daddy always comes home. He listened, thought about it, and replied, "I just wanted to see you before you came home."

I've notice a lot lately that I'm learning a lot from my son. I'm enjoying this stage more than any others as he's dialogging so honestly and thoroughly about life, God, friends, baseball, basketball, Mom & Dad, and so much more. As I was carrying him home this morning, I thought about how so many Christians live their physical lives content to wait for the day when their Father comes home. What if we went hard after our Father because we can't wait for Him to come home. We want Him now. We want to follow him now and be with him now. What if we had that type of urgency to go where God the Father is - where He's walking and moving. Jacob was so confident that he knew where I was. He had no doubt we would be where I was. He was so caught up in the moment of finding me that he didn't make any plans, didn't put on shoes or a shirt, he just went for it. It's not small thing that scripture teaches us to have the faith of a child. What if we didn't sit around waiting for Jesus to come back and went out where we know He's walking and join Him, walk with Him, let Him carry us home, all the while just being excited that we are with Him and becoming like Him.

It was a beautiful thing, it really was.