Most mornings these days I get to experience something that I absolutely love.

I’m in the kitchen getting breakfast ready for the kids when I hear it: my 4-year-old daughter’s sound machine gets a little louder. I know that she is awake has just opened her door to come out.

I wait and listen. Next, I hear her quick, tiny feet. She rushes to just outside the kitchen, her pull-up diaper making those soft swishy noises with her steps. She stops just behind the wall and pauses for a second or two.

Then she bursts around the corner, her baby and ‘blanky’ in one hand, the other rubbing her sleepy eyes. She runs right at me and buries her face in my legs, and I wrap my arms around her.

There is something really beautiful about this picture that applies to the ‘older children’ among us.

My daughter is still young and cannot make her own breakfast, let alone plan her day. She is totally dependent on us, her parents. So the first thing she does in the morning is run to us – the ones who love her and will take care of her. She innately knows that even though she does not know what will happen this day, as long as she has found us, she will be ok.

And, obviously, we are absolutely delighted to drop what we’re doing, give her a huge hug, tell her we love her and soak in the moment.

Could our relationship with God be the same?

When we start our day coming to Him, we are acknowledging that we don’t know what the day will hold, but as long as we’ve found Him, we know we’ll be ok.

And I’m sure that He is just as delighted to scoop us up and tell us how much we’re loved.

As I was holding her the other day, I told her, “I know you won’t always do this, but I love that you do. Someday, instead of you running to me, I’m going to come running over to you to give you a big morning hug, and you’re going to push me away and say, ‘no, Dad, stop it.’ But I won’t be able to. I just love you too much!”

I wonder, are you pushing God away, or are you running to Him each morning?