Puzzles

There was this picture I saw a couple weeks ago of a gal sitting on the floor with the huge puzzle in front of her that she had finished. It was a beautiful jungle type theme that has the different animals and plants that you would see in that environment. There was a lot of color and and lot of places in which the plants looked the same. This puzzle looked as if she had put it together on her kitchen floor just so that she could build a frame around it and keep it in that spot forever. It was a sight to see and the women had a look of joy on her face with the finished project. That is what I would call patience. It never said how long it took her to finish the puzzle or if she had help but I could imagine it took a lot of time and if she had friends and family help her finish it I bet the conversations they had over the puzzle pieces were great ones.

The thing about puzzles is you can’t really do them fast. They require that you slow down and pay attention to the details of the picture that is being created. While at my parents house my dad had a puzzle out on the kitchen table that he had started. It was about a quarter of the way done so my sister and my brother decided one night to sit down and work on it. The picture was beautiful and we were all for it until we noticed almost right away that the pieces all were cut into the same shape. Most puzzles have the pieces cut into different shapes so that it’s easier to figure out where they go. This one was a doozy. You had to figure out how to put the puzzle together based on the picture alone. Now you could cheat by looking on the underside of the pieces to see that they had numbers on them (not like a paint my number but more like numbers repeating themselves). So if you thought a piece went in a certain spot you could look on the back and see if it was a “1” in the “3” section for instance. It got frustrating real quick. We thought pieces were in the right spot just to find they belonged in another part of the puzzle all together.

I admit we ended up cheating to finish this puzzle but it was because we wanted to start a different puzzle that wasn’t as frustrating. It’s crazy to think that even if a puzzle piece is made to have the same shape as all the other pieces in the puzzle that is still has a spot. You can’t force it into a space that it doesn’t belong. With normal puzzles this is more true. If the piece doesn’t fit no amount of manipulation that will make it be right. Maybe that’s why when we were younger the puzzles we tried to do had maybe 100 pieces, they were big pieces and the pictures were simple to follow, but there wasn’t any challenge in them. As an adult those puzzles would be done in ten minutes tops.

Now picture this. In the big scheme of things our world is like a puzzle. We are all part of the puzzle, we have our own unique shape, though it can look similar to someone else’s shape. We have a certain spot we fit into and no amount of manipulation will change the fact that we won’t fit into another person’s spot. Our creator (Christ) is the one that is putting this puzzle together and knows what the finished picture looks like, but He is taking his time because He has no reason to hurry. Just like when my sister, my brother and I put together the puzzle there was some good conversations going on. We laughed, we talked and of course we ate snacks together. There were times in which my momma came and sat with us just put pieces in their intended spots, but it was more for the fellowship we had together that she really came to be with us. We took our time, I think Christ takes His time too because while He is working on the puzzle, He has fellowship with us. What an amazing idea. Christ never intended for us to rush through life, He never intended for us to try and fit in, He instead wanted us to stand out, so that when our spot was found, we would know without a doubt that it was where we were meant to be. You are part of the bigger picture. Until next time:

In every puzzle there are pieces that fit in the spots they were made for. In order to find those spots one must be willing to sit back and look at the big picture and have the patience to find that spot.

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