Share / A Puzzle

When I was in highschool I had the opportunity to be a part of a drama called “The Puzzle”. It was put out by the Billy Graham Association and it was a presentation that was set to a soundtrack. We mouthed the words but the voices weren’t our own. This enabled us to take the message of Jesus and the gospel to Guatemala and Mexico and present even though we didn’t speak Spanish fluently.

The theme song of the The Puzzle goes like this,

Life is like a puzzle, but we can work it out.

Talk to the one who made it all, who knows what life’s about.

I played the main girl, Nikki. She was sad and lonely because her friends didn’t want to play with her. She found a box and inside were all these toys and each toy helped her place a new piece of the puzzle until the whole picture about how God wanted to be her friend and Jesus made a way for God to be her friend was complete. I loved performing The Puzzle, I loved watching kids respond to the truth found in the story, and I loved being reminded that I am a friend of God through Jesus.

I often think of God as a great puzzle maker, and we are all the pieces. We each have a few pieces and we can only see those pieces, the ones right in front of us. Other people come into our lives and they have different pieces, or similar pieces and we aren’t sure how it all is supposed to fit together.

Sometimes we think that our pieces create a puzzle all by themselves. That we don’t need someone else’s pieces to make something beautiful. We think that our pieces, and the puzzle they will undoubtedly make is the most beautiful and the most important.

Sometimes we think our pieces don’t matter, because they look like nothing. A bit of blue, a splash of yellow or green, we don’t have an important enough piece so we sit down and we don’t try to find where we fit in.

Or maybe we think that we need to find the pieces that are just like us and we congregate together thinking for sure this will make a beautiful picture, except it doesn’t, because pieces that are all edges or all corners, they ultimately don’t fit together and aren’t able to make any kind of picture.

When I do a puzzle, I always set the box up in front of me, there is no way I can complete the picture without an idea of what it is I am working towards. In the same way, I believe that when we look at our story and the pieces that we have to offer the world, we need to consult the holder of the big picture, God. He has a great plan and has given all of us a part to play, a piece to hold. No piece is more important than the other piece, a puzzle isn’t complete unless all the pieces are there together.

I wonder if this is what Jesus was thinking about when he prayed that his followers would be one as He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. If he was imagining the beautiful picture Christ Followers would create if we all joined our lives together.

The puzzle analogy isn’t perfect, but I think it helps us imagine what we get to be a part of. When we think of ourselves as pieces to a beautiful picture that God has designed then it takes away competition, scarcity mindset, and skepticism that lead to disunity among Jesus Followers. When we know that all of our pieces are equally important, that everything each of us is called to is needed and purposed by God there is a security in that. You might call it faith, faith in the picture we can’t see and the Creator God who is putting it all together.

We can take too much on ourselves, we think it is our job to police each other, to decide if an idea is a good one or not. We think our resources are ours to clutch onto or pass out as we see value in the pieces of the puzzle that those around us are holding. We are stingy with praise, encouragement, finances and support. We don’t see how someone else’s piece is valuable based on the pieces in our own hands. We don’t get it, because we don’t have the right perspective.

One of the many amazing things about God is that he lets us in on the big picture when we ask. He invites us into vision, he gives wisdom liberally to those who request it. When we get even a little bit more of a birds eye view, all of a sudden we are amazed at how God, who has all the resources to make everything happen more than we can ask, think or imagine according to HIS power at work within us, is connecting us together not to accomplish our plan but to accomplish his.

If you are clutching on to your puzzle pieces today thinking what you have to offer doesn’t matter, that is a lie. You and the story that your pieces tell, they matter, they matter so much.

If you are holding on tight hoarding your pieces waiting to build your own puzzle instead of sharing, and choosing to be a part of the bigger picture, my sweet friend, you are missing out on being a part of what God is doing around you and more importantly what he wants to do in and through you.

If you are skeptical of other people’s pieces and what they represent, I encourage you to surrender. It is way easier to let God take care of people and their stories than for you to do it. Let it go and choose love, generosity and encouragement. God is just, he knows motives and we will stand before him one day and answer for ourselves and what we did, not for others and what they did.

We get to be connected together, and when we share with each other and choose to connect our stories, our pieces, oh the beautiful picture that we get to see God create! Friends! There is no scarcity with God, no need for competition and skepticism isn’t our job. Don’t trust people, trust the God who made them.

Then, stand back and watch the beautiful picture unfold.

Because,

Life is like a puzzle, but we can work it out.

Talk to the one who made it all, who knows what it’s all about.