A Character Study of God

Laura and I went to the Mountain of Authors conference yesterday. Reflecting this morning on the writing craft and specifically character development, I confess I prayed, "Father, in character study Thou would be flat."

OK, in my defense, in order to create "rounded" and in-depth characters an author must build in personality traits, histories, strengths and weaknesses, and so forth. In a poem I wrote thirty years ago I penned the thought, "What do I know of Thee except Thou art a God?"

But no sooner did this reoccurring thought escape my mind this morning than a humbling realization took its place. Didn't the Savior say, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father"? He made it crystal clear that He did nothing but what the Father told Him to do and say.

So in a figurative but also a literal sense, didn't Heavenly Father unmask Himself in the person of His Son? Wouldn't the study of the life of the Savior  also be a study of the Father?  And if we went one step further in this supposition, if we did a character study of the Savior wouldn't we see ourselves as His daughters, and thus be doing and saying the things He would have us do? Wouldn't following the Savior mean literally following Him into the Father's very arms?