Songfacts®:

• This was inspired by the story that Jesus told of the Prodigal Son who wastes his inheritance on riotous living and reaches rock bottom, but is welcomed back by his forgiving father on his return home. The song is reminder to those who have wandered far, that God longs for their return and celebrates in their arrival.
• Lead singer Dave Frey told NewReleaseToday the story behind this song, which the band wrote with Seth Mosely, during a retreat in a lake house just outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania. "We were thinking about all of these people in our lives who come up to us at shows and say, 'pray for my daughter, she's left the church and she's lost, and she's hurting and doesn't even know it.' That's the cry of a mother's and father's heart," he said. "It echoed with me. I've felt the same way for my brother and my cousin who have gone through hard things."
  
  "We wanted to write this song, whether for you or for someone you know and love dearly, when you are asking God why this is happening," Frey continued. "A lot of our songs are inspired by C.S. Lewis quotes. This song came out of Ruth Bell Graham citing C.S. Lewis and the story of the Prodigal in the Bible. The quote says: "'Dad, I'm not at all sure I can follow you any longer in your simple Christian faith' stated the clergyman's son when he returned from the university for holidays with a fledgling scholar's assured arrogance. The father's black eyes skewered his son, who was 'lost,' as C.S. Lewis put it, 'in the invincible ignorance of his intellect.' 'Son,' the father said, 'That is your freedom, your terrible freedom.'"
  
  "I love that quote," he concluded, "and when I started to think about all of those people who had been lost, and the invincibility of their ignorant intellect, this song came pouring out of us."