Puzzled

I've recently been into puzzles. Probably because everything else in my life seems like it is in little pieces. Something to be figured out and pieced together to make sense.

Just yesterday I finished the puzzle I was working on. A sweet little country scene with a farm house, red barn, wooden fence, lots of trees, and a winding road that vanishes off the edge. As I finished this little 500 piece jigsaw I sat back, hesitating to put in that last piece. I hate looking at it incomplete. Yet couldn't bear the thought that once this piece was in, my days of figuring it out were through.

Begrudgingly I put the piece in. There it was. The reward for my hard work. Completed, so small, and yet as I was going through it there were times I just had to put the pieces down, take a step back, and reorient myself. I often thought, oh surely the puzzle maker messed up, they must have cut this piece wrong, I know it goes here. Not once though was a piece cut wrong. I would make it fit somewhere, looking slightly askew but averting my eyes so I wouldn't have to deal with it. In the end though, every piece found it's home, it's fit, and the picture was made complete and just as the puzzle maker had intended.

When I finished there was this desire in me to rip it all apart and start over, the way sometimes after I finish reading a good book I want to start back at the beginning and read it all over again right then. But ick, not with all those grassy, tree limb pieces. Then a thought occurred to me. I can't say it's the smartest thing but it was just my next thought. I could flip it over, number the pieces, break it apart and then put it together again, just using the numbers.

As I thought about that idea I realized how silly that would be. The fun of doing a puzzle isn't in simply placing pieces together in a number order. The fun of doing a puzzle is the shifting, the searching, the twisting, the matching. That's the fun!

I realize there are many things in this writing, as I look back over it, that could be compared to the spiritual journey but this is what stuck out to me most. This last thought.

Life is hard. There are pieces that seem to have no place in my picture. Pieces whose corners seem to need a bit of a trimming. Pieces that seem to be missing or scattered on the floor. But this, this is my life. Random pieces and all! God could have given me each piece numbered on the back so that it was easy to figure out but He hasn't. He has given some pieces and reserved others and asks that I would trust Him in developing a beautiful picture. And that is half the fun. No, it surely doesn't seem like fun when pieces can't be used when I want them to, when they don't fit, when I steal a piece from a friends puzzle to compensate for my seeming lack of a piece. But the fun is slowly watching this picture take shape, to begin to make a little sense, to see how all of these little pieces actually do fit together to create something meaningful and meant for His glory.

So yes, I'm often puzzled staring at these pieces He has given, but I'm also amazed as I see Him taking my pieces, placing them in spots I didn't see and creating in me something spectacular!