I have always liked puzzles. I’m talking about the old-fashioned pressed cardboard puzzle with a picture printed on the front. I’m a visual thinker, so those types of puzzles are both challenging and fun. Math and word puzzles, on the other hand, do little more for me than stress me out, lol.
I was walking into the sanctuary of the church, this past Monday, and found a single piece of a puzzle laying on the floor. I picked it up and slipped it into my pocket and pressed ahead into the task I was attempting to complete, but I did not forget that puzzle piece. In fact, I’ve taken it out of my pocket a few times and examined it, wondering what in the world the complete picture could be. This piece is a blending of gray, shades of brown, and black. The swath of gray is the dominant color of the piece. I have no idea…but, I wonder.
Life has been compared to a puzzle. It makes sense, when you consider the flow of time and the various adventures that fill those moments. Some of them a filled with laughter and warm fuzzies. Others are filled with crying and utter darkness. With the passing of time, the pieces all seem to fit, like the pieces of a puzzle.
There are times, however, when the piece just doesn’t seem to fit. Like the puzzle piece I found laying on the carpet of the sanctuary, from our perspective there is no rhyme or reason…there is nothing but a series of questions, doubts even, and that makes us uncomfortable.
Into those times, God speaks.
He speaks through the writer of Ecclesiastes and tells us, “There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens…” (3:1).
He speaks through Jesus, who says, like he spoke to Peter in John 13, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (13:7)
Then, in John 14, we hear Jesus assurance, speaking of the Holy Spirit, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” (14:18 KJV)
It’s in those times, when the pieces don’t seem to fit, we are not left without guidance, abandoned to the frailty of our emotions and the stress hormones that naturally course through our bodies. We have a place to land and stand, in God’s Word, according to the grace and peace that comes through Jesus, our Lord. For that I am grateful.
2 May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
3 His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. 4 Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature.
1 Peter 1:2-4