PUZZLES
Remember the well known saying from the Forest Gump movie “Life is like a box of chocolates...”? Lately I’ve been thinking that life is like a box of jigsaw pieces. God has put all the parts and pieces that make up our life into “box” and says “this is the life I’m giving you”. It seems like then it is up to us to put it together and make something useful and even beautiful of what He has given us. In the box is our genetic make up, the legacy handed down from past generations, the people God puts in our lives, our schooling, our jobs, and circumstance, everything about us goes in the box. I believe the instructions for putting our life together are included, if we pay attention. We have guidelines and we have a picture to follow, but we can only see the picture through a clouded glass, which makes it tough. We try, we do the best we can, but sometimes, it seems, the parts don’t fit together all that well. Sometimes, it seems, we place some of the pieces in the wrongs positions and that makes our picture seem less “perfect”.
But what about when some of the pieces have been taken away or lost. No one likes a puzzle that has pieces missing. After all the work of getting everything right only to find a key piece is lost is frustrating and takes some of the fun away from the entire effort. When we lose a loved one, we’ve lost a major piece of our life’s puzzle. The picture we are working so hard to make into something special is now impossible to complete. It seems the only thing we can do is to try to make the picture turn out as best we can with the pieces that are left. We can make something, some sort of picture, but it is not the one we’ve been working so hard to get just right.
So here’s the question. Is it possible to take another puzzle, someone else’s box of pieces, someone who has also lost major pieces of their puzzle, and combine it with yours and construct a complete, new, picture? If there are two different boxes, two different pictures, which were in various stages of completion, can those pieces now make one picture? Can something beautiful be salvaged from two boxes with missing pieces by combining them? Can the new picture be anything like the originals were going to be. If any one were to ask me, my answer would be absolutely. It is possible, not because we are so skilled at putting puzzles together ourselves, but because the giver of the puzzle, the creator of the pieces, can do miracles! At certain times in our lives we see them happen. We are able see through the clouded glass a little more perceptively at times; at other times our Creator recreates our picture, miracles. We are able to see a new set of possibilities for the new picture utilizing the pieces of the new puzzle that is now mixed in with our original. With effort and our Creator’s guiding hand we are able to work at the new puzzle. We are able to see where the new pieces fit in with the existing ones. One of the special arrangements the Creator has with us is that we can ask if we are doing it right. We can ask for help throughout the endeavor. He will guide our puzzle solving efforts. Something new and beautiful can be completed.
I know this is true because I see it happening in my life!