When I think of God

I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation... Albert Einstein

I could not agree with Einstein more.
So often its ingrained in us that God is this entity that has created us in His own image, He is our Father, and yet we are sent through life expecting the worst to happen with the only explanation of "well this is life, we are going to be constantly tested and tried so we can prove our love and devotion to God so we can make it to His Kingdom or heaven" After 26 years of living this life, sitting at night crying and wondering WHY WHY WHY I sought clarity. I wanted to understand WHY we would be put through so much only to die and HOPE we did enough good works to have salvation. Living through the back and forth of "if it feels good to you then it must be of Satan", and when something bad happens Satan put it there OR God could be testing you... HUH? This last year or so of my life, everything has been turned upside down and I sat one night again wondering WHY my God that loves me so very much would watch this happen, so I prayed and I meditated and I was answered. The things Ive gone through were some direct situations I frequently judged others on. I started to monitor my own thinking and saw how negative my thoughts were. I started to challenge EVERYTHING I thought I believed in, and found at the end that we ARE created in His Image and we ARE His children and as a mother (a human one at that) I look at my son and I know I don't ever want to see him suffer, I want to develop him to have all the right tools and resources to be a great adult. I don't want to punish him and guilt him, I want to love and grow him into making the right choice, if I think that way and I am a branch of God then I can only come to the conclusion that God as well wants to love us and grow us (his children) into a wonderful person. He tells us to be child like and as adults we teach our children to be less child like. So I then started to observe children, non judgemental, loving, imaginative, creative, caring, and playful. I start to realize how "adulthood" turned me from all those things to a negative, cynical person. So I challenged that too. I'm still going down this road, through this journey and I am becoming so much more happy and fulfilled. I now know that God GIVES us all the tools and the gifts, That we are already creators, WE create our lives and our destiny, we can choose to happen to life or we can choose to let life happen to us (a new fave quote) I don't believe in a God that is insecure enough to put his children through hell to prove their love for Him, that's a human emotion, I do however believe in a human heart that has become so impure and tough and detached that we now create our circumstances, we are far more powerful and accountable than we realize or maybe more that we want to acknowledge because THEN we have no one else to blame. I believe in an all loving God that guides us, talks to us and sends us messages of light and hope when our thoughts or choices has given us a chance to grow and develop. The more we can let Gods light and love shine through us as his example and choose to be loving, pure, and forgiving the closer we are to Him in those moments. We are human so we will make mistakes and not accept the consequences and then have to repeat that lesson again. Its not punishment from our loving Father, its us creating our life minute by minute, action by action, thought by thought. When we can stop and realize WE are in control and He is behind us (like a parent coaching the child riding a bike or taking those first steps) knowing and believing as a fact that we are the ones responsible for our lives, its a great feeling, you don't resent God you embrace him and want to strive that much more to shine on. I imagine my God as a serene flow of water, a gentle breeze, a caring touch, a warm smile. It goes against everything I thought I knew and I am glad I challenged and rose out of the old me.