He Was Already Running

The track up to that farm is nine hundred meters and Ross had used about six hundred of them and the speech was still not right.

He is thirty-eight. He has not been up that track since the February before last, and the reason is not dramatic and is not interesting and is mostly a series of small things that were allowed to become a large thing because nobody stopped them.

He had rung. He had said he might come up. He had not said when, because he had wanted the option of not doing it.

He parked at the bottom because the gate was awkward and because parking at the bottom gave him nine hundred meters.

He used them. He is the kind of man who uses them.

By four hundred he had a version where he did not blame anybody. By five hundred he had put back one thing that he thought he was entitled to say and then, by five fifty, taken it out again. At six hundred he was working on the opening, because he knew that everything after the opening would go wherever the opening put it.

And at about six twenty he looked up.

There was somebody about a hundred and eighty meters away, coming down the track, moving quickly.

His father is seventy-one and had a knee done in the spring and does not move quickly for anything.

Ross said afterwards that the thing that took his legs out from under him was not the coming. It was the arithmetic.

Because at six twenty in the afternoon, in December, on a track that is not overlooked from the house, a man of seventy-one with a new knee does not just happen to be on it. He was watching. He had been watching the road, at that hour, on the chance, for however long it had been.

Ross never gave the speech. He got about four words out somewhere around the seven hundred meter mark and that was the end of it.

You may be on a track of your own. Whatever the distance, you are probably using it, and the version at four hundred is better than the version at three hundred and it will not be as good as the one at seven. And nobody has ever pointed out to you what the words a great way off actually imply about the other end of the road.

A Great Way Off Means He Was Looking

There is a line in the middle of the most famous story Jesus ever told, and one phrase in it does more work than anything else in the paragraph.

"But when 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

A great way off.

Think about what has to be true for that phrase to be in the sentence. A man is not seen at a great distance by somebody who is busy indoors. He is seen at a great distance by somebody who is looking down the road.

Which means the watching predates the appearing. The father in that story had been out, at some point, on some days, looking at a road, before there was anything on it.

You have been watched for rather than waited on. Luke 15 puts the seeing at a great distance and therefore puts the looking before the arriving, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and stands it on a nine hundred meter track in December.

And then look at the order of the four verbs. Saw. Had compassion. Ran. Fell on his neck. All four of them happen before the son opens his mouth, and the speech, which Luke has already given us in full so that we know exactly what was in it, arrives afterwards and gets cut off.

You were seen, felt for, run to and embraced before one word of your version was spoken. That is what the written word does with a return, and it is the Spirit of God who makes four verbs in a row land in a man doing arithmetic about a knee.

Nothing Is Being Asked At The End Of This Track

Now say it plainly, because this is the landing category and what happens at the end of these pages is the whole guarantee of this site.

Nothing here asks you for anything. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no schedule, no commitment, no next step, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere at all, this one included.

You will not finish this page owing anything to anybody, and there is no arrangement waiting further down that turns the running into an account.

And whatever the February before last was about, this article has no view on it and is not asking you to explain it here.

You are not walking into a reckoning at the top of the track. It is written that He first loved us, which puts the order beyond argument, and His Spirit is the one who has been on that road with you every one of the nine hundred meters.

And you are as fully His at six hundred meters with a bad speech as you are at the gate, because all four verbs happen before anybody says anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page from putting a fifth verb on the end that belongs to you.