I was serious about God years ago and I have drifted a long way since. I want to believe again and I do not. How do I come back?

“Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.”

Hosea prophesied to a northern kingdom deep into national unfaithfulness, and his whole book runs on the image of a man married to a woman who left him. This line is the people's own return song, and its assumption is that the way back is a short sentence rather than a long penance. What matters here is the direction of travel, not the distance already covered.

“And he arose, and came to his father. 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.”

Jesus tells this parable to religious people annoyed that he ate with the wrong crowd. The son's speech is rehearsed and self-interested; he is heading home mainly because he is hungry. The father runs anyway, before any of the speech gets delivered. In a culture where an older man running was undignified, that detail is the point: the welcome is not calibrated to the quality of the return.