I walked away from God deliberately years ago. Now I want to come back and I cannot imagine he would want me.

“Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.”

Joel was speaking to a devastated farming community after a locust plague stripped the land bare. He calls them back to God and immediately heads off the obvious fear, which is that returning means facing someone furious. The reason he gives for coming back is God's own character rather than any improvement on their part. Return is invited on the grounds of who is waiting, not on the grounds of what you bring.

“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 told this story to religious people who objected that he ate with the wrong crowd. The son in it has rehearsed a speech and expects to negotiate for the status of a hired servant. He never gets to finish it. The detail Jesus adds deliberately is that the father saw him a long way off, which tells you what the old man had been doing every day the boy was gone.