"The Greatest Truth I've Ever Learned"

Looking back on your life can be either depressing or exciting. It depends on where you are as a result of the things you've learned and the choices you've made. We all make mistakes, sometimes early in life that become the hindering baggage we drag along the rest of our lives. But, we can make better choices and learn new lessons from those mistakes unless we live out the lie that someone else is to be blamed for how my life is turning out.
At this time of year most of us probably give some thought to the past year and try to focus on some important ways to improve in the new year that is now upon us. That's not a bad thing to do if we put the emphasis on the right things. Setting goals can be a crucial element for progress and improvement in areas of my life that are important to me. However, truly meaningful goals are those that drill down to the person I am and want to become and let those drive what I do, how I think and the relationships I cultivate.
My beautiful daughter, Michelle, asked me recently what is the greatest lesson I have learned from writing the journal for my youngest beautiful daughter, Felicia, this year. She knows I have been writing a journal for her sister all this year on the subject of the Holy Spirit. I could talk for hours about how writing that journal has impacted my faith and my life, but my answer to Michelle's question sums it all up -
"I have learned from the Holy Spirit to love God as my Father, to love him for WHO he is not just what he does for me."
That may sound like an over simplification of a very complicated proposition but for me it is truly the Greatest Truth I've Learned in all of my 71 years of living. Love is a very personal way of relating to someone in your life and understanding how to relate to the Creator, the Sustainer, the absolute Ruler over all that is, is for me, greater than any other thing I can know.
So, here is a suggestion for you for 2013 - FALL IN LOVE WITH GOD on a very personal level. Begin an unbroken conversation with him, the thread of which you can take up at any moment of any day, and just talk to him. He has been seeking that relationship with you all of your life and now you should seek it too. There are no rules, there is no systematic plan to get you there. Go to Jesus in the Gospels, sit down with David in the Psalms, spend a few months with the Apostle Paul in Romans or whatever you choose, just keep asking your Father to teach you and love on you.    HALLELUJAH!