A New Year Goal

I'll be honest, I don't know if I necessarily like New Year's Resolutions.  Sometimes I get lulled into a false sense of security that if I mess up, I'll just wait until next year to try to change.  Then when I attempt to change something in my life, I give up after a couple of days or weeks if I'm lucky.  Anyhow, I think that it is almost natural to set goals at the beginning of the year.  Those goals must be specific, measurable, and obtainable.  One of my goals is to write on this blog at least once a week.  So far, so good, right? 
Lately, I've been thinking about my personal belief in God.  Who is He?  What is my relationship to Him and with Him?  I'll never forget an experience I had with my Dad.  When I was about to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my Dad told me that if I ever wanted to know what he believed about God that I could ask him.  So one day I did.  He took me to nearly each window of our house in Columbia, Illinois.  He told me to look outside each one.  Then he took me on top of our roof.  He told me that each person has a different perspective of who God is and what the world is like and that God sees it all.  What an awesome lesson.  I still ponder on what he told me that day, and even though my Dad is not Mormon, his belief in God is not far off what I believe.  So, Dad, if you are reading this, I'm going to tell you what I believe about God.  I believe the same thing you do.  Each person on this earth has a different window, perspectives of how this world is and who God is.  God does see it all.  He knows all and knows us.  I believe that we are literally children of Him.  That He is our Heavenly Father, and that we lived with Him before we were born into this life.  I know that we look like Him, that he is not just some apparition or puff of smoke or some foreign alien experimenting on a planet and its creations.  He has a body as tangible as yours or mine and as a prophet once said that He is "an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!"  Man was and is created in His image.  I believe that He wants us to experience life for ourselves and that even though our life's windows might be cloudy, scratched,  broken or even stolen, that He is merciful and just.  And just like an earthly father wants the best for his children, God wants the same and that means to become like Him.  He is also omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent (I could get into the famous philosophical question, how could such a God allow there to be such suffering and misery or evil, which I believe I have the answer to, but I will save that for another week's post).  I know that we can know Him as we search him out, and that He will make Himself known to us when we do seek.  I love Him and will do all I can to make sure that one day I will be with Him again.  Even though men have tried to prove that He doesn't exist, He always will, even when we may say that He doesn't.  Thank you Dad for that lesson you taught me that day.  I love you and hope that I can use what you have taught me to teach my children as well.