For You, Lord, have made me glad through Your work; I will triumph in the works of Your hands (Psalm 92:4).
One year, we went to Florida for Thanksgiving. While there, my girls and I put together a puzzle. We worked feverishly for three days to get it done. It seemed we could never find the right piece we were searching for. We have a system. First, we find the corner pieces, next the edge pieces to make the frame. Then, we each take a section and work by color and design in our section.
We’d say things like, “Who sees some pieces that look like brick?” or “Who sees some flowery pieces?” or “This is hard because my section has too much solid white in it.” But, it’s really fun when we can connect two of our sections together.
We would find little pieces here and there (not very significant in our eyes)
but not the “big” piece we desperately wanted to find. Sometimes, we finish a puzzle and discover there’s one piece missing. What a huge disappointment. We turn everything upside down trying to find that one piece. If it can’t be found, it’s almost as if the whole process was a waste. Of course, it wasn’t, because spending time with my daughters is never a waste of time. Just because there’s a kink in the final outcome shouldn’t ruin all that. But it’s just hard for our eyes not to zoom in on that one small missing piece instead of looking at all the other hundreds of pieces that are there.
Well, I have discovered through the years that most of life is like a puzzle a big part of the time. As a matter of fact, this analogy is one of my favorite ways to try to find encouragement when things just seem to not be exactly right in my opinion. It seems like we search and search for the most significant, prominent pieces of life’s puzzle so to speak, to determine not only what our future should be, but what our present should look like, as well.
We disregard all the things that seem unimportant to us. Things
that don’t fit into our plan are perceived to be a big waste of our
time. We get bored or discontented when all the pieces seem to
be blah and all the same old color. We don’t stop to think about
the fact that God always sees the unfinished picture; because, to
us, there are too many white pieces, or too many grey or black
pieces.
What we love the most are the bright colorful ones. After all, those are the ones that bring life to the picture. But the thing that may be hard to realize at the time is that if you take out all those dull grey, black, white and muted pieces, you’ll just have one big bright mass of color with no definition of any kind. There’d be no separation anywhere of scenes or objects. All those tiny seemingly insignificant pieces are important.
You need the little pieces to complete the puzzle and connect it together. It’s the joy of the searching and anticipating what the outcome will be that is part of the journey. God knows and keeps up with all the pieces and places them in the right place at the right time.
Paula’s Prayer
Lord, I thank You that You hold all the pieces to my life and I
don’t have to worry about when or where or how to connect it all
together. I can leave that to You and it will turn out just right.
Amen.
