ONE BIG PUZZLE

I love doing jigsaw puzzles!!

My personal record – a 2,000 piece puzzle! (OK, I didn’t do it by myself…but still, two THOUSAND pieces!!!)

It’s funny how people work on puzzles differently.

My dad, the mechanical engineer, insists on finding the four corners first, then finishing the border, (“Look for all the straight edges…”), and then he proceeds to tackle the puzzle by looking at shapes.

I have a slightly different method. I agree with the four-corner idea, and then the border fill-in. But from there, I have a slightly more artistic way to approach things. I make all kinds of little piles of puzzle pieces that have the same pattern or color on them.

We’re all different…

I had a friend whose grandmother thought it was too easy doing jigsaw puzzles using the picture on the box. So, she would turn all the pieces upside-down, and put the puzzle together just by looking at the shapes!!

That might work with older puzzles, when the shapes were all different…a little harder with new puzzles that are machine-cut, and all the pieces look EXACTLY ALIKE!!!

But her method of “puzzle-putting-together” got me thinking…

What if I tried to do it that way?

I could see me finding pieces that “look” like they fit – only to discover that they don’t…not quite. I might be patient for a while, but then, in sheer frustration, instead of waiting and looking for the right piece, I might start “forcing” the issue.

“I just know this is the piece. It has to go in here. Look at this little twisty side – it matches this over here. It’s just got to fit. Here, maybe if I push a little harder…”

You get the picture? (No pun intended…)

This whole jigsaw puzzle idea has interesting spiritual lessons, I think.

How often do I try to solve the “jigsaw puzzle” of my life on my own? How often do I try to jam all the little pieces into the places where I think they fit? And if they don’t, how often do I try to force things to fit together “my” way? And then, if they still don’t fit, do I just throw my hands up in frustration and quit? Or do I sometimes sit with a broken puzzle piece in my hand, the remnant of all that forceful pushing?

Hmmm…

Is it just possible that I’m looking at the whole thing upside-down???

God sees the PICTURE, my friends – the COMPLETE picture!

He sees the pattern of the shapes, the nuances of the colors. He sees where the straight edges go. He sees how the pieces with twisty sides match up with others perfectly.

He sees the way the puzzle will look when it’s finally put together right.

A few posts ago, I talked about having heavenly perspective. Trying to look at things through God’s eyes. It’s something we have to practice, for sure. But the truth of the matter is this – we will never in this life have the FULL picture. God is the only One who has true Heavenly perspective.

So, why not trust the Lord, the Great Puzzle Master – the One who cut the original pieces, and sees the completed picture?

A life, ordered and connected, with ALL the pieces meshing together

JUST SO…

In a pattern He ordained…

“Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” (Psalm 139:16)

“You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”

(Mark 8:33)

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts…And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

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