Puzzles

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

“Puzzles”

            One of the hobbies I used to enjoy as a young boy was putting puzzles together with my parents.  They would bring a 4-foot by 4-foot piece of paneling to the dining room and place it on the table.  This would be our workspace.  Hours upon hours would be spent under the dining room light trying to find that one special piece.  We would work on it for a while and then take it to a sparsely populated section of the house so the progress wouldn’t be accidently bumped to the floor.  Once completed, the trick was turning it over without the thousand interlocking pieces falling apart!

            If you were in the same camp, enjoying puzzling, how did you construct the puzzle.  Did you work on the border first, and then begin to fill in from the edges?  This is how I learned to puzzle, but I’ve found a different way, one that’s difficult for me to do.  I learned this new way of constructing a puzzle from my youngest granddaughter.

            I started Violet out with some easy puzzles; the fifty-piece ones.  She quickly graduated to the 100-piece, and then on to the 500-piece challenges.  I tried to teach her the “Papa” method of bordering first.  It didn’t stick!  As I carefully assembled the border of the puzzle, I noticed she had several bunches of puzzle pieces already constructed.  Then when I finished the border, she would begin to drop in the bunches of ten or fifteen-piece masses and correctly place them inside the borders.  Her spatial abilities at the young age of 8 years-old are scary amazing.

            In some respects, I think our lives are like a puzzle, being constructed one piece at a time.  What does each piece represent?  I think God allows people to come into our lives and create a memory for us.  Some pieces will be darker than others.  Some will be brilliant and full of light.  Each piece builds a tapestry of a puzzle called our life, with God as the Master “Puzzler!”  He builds the border for us and then allows each piece to be added to our beautiful picture He is creating for us.

            What will our puzzle look like when it’s completed?  While we can remember bits and pieces of it, those given to us by the people who have had the greatest impact on our lives, I believe our puzzles are constructed face down.  It is impossible for us to see the big picture, to see how each piece or each encounter came at just the right time and then was gone.  Then when we are called to Heaven, Jesus will turn our puzzle over to reveal a beautiful picture and how each piece fits together in its own way to form the person we are.  God creates our puzzle in His great wisdom and grace.

            As people come into our life and then for some reason fade from it, don’t despair.  Remember that God is building a massive puzzle called our life and will reveal the beauty some day of how each person, by His grace, built the beauty and of who we are – in Christ.