Building Jigsaw Puzzles

It has been far too long since I have written.  I suppose I could offer up any number of excuses, but not a one would change the fact I have been neglectful & careless with this.  The more days that passed the more daunting the blank page, and the more elusive ideas.  In the end I knew it would all come back around.
Jigsaw puzzles.  Yes, jigsaws.  Love them or hate them ( I fall into the latter category) most of us find an unfinished one somehow irresistible,  we must try & fit in one piece at least.  
Have you ever tried to build one without the picture on the box as a guide?  Even with the picture they can be frustrating.  You find a piece that looks like it ought to fit & it doesn't.  Turn it this way & that, you can not make it fit.  Sometimes in frustration & vain assurance we may pound it into the place we think it belongs.  And perhaps when the puzzle pieces are all used up there seem to be pieces missing.  We take the empty box, peer inside, even shake it to be doubly sure.

Sitting in the warm summer dawn this morning, gazing blindly out the window, sipping my coffee, I got to thinking about my life, about the disarray of broken pieces it seems to be built out of.  In that moment I saw the jigsaw puzzle.  All those piece, put together correctly make a beautiful picture, but I can't see the photograph on the lid, and I have, at times (more often than I'd like to admit) tried to force a piece to fit where I thought it should belong.  I have mistaken a piece of brilliant blue lake for a piece of the summer sky.  I have despaired that I am missing pieces that may have slipped under the table.  And I saw that I might be better off letting go, handing the pieces of my life to the One who does know what  the picture is supposed to look like, to One with the patience to fit the pieces properly.


It was like a light bulb went on.  Something I knew, and had even acted on before; but I need to gather up the broken pieces of my life, all those loose & scattered bits of a bigger picture, and Let God fit them together according to His grand design.  After all He not only has the box lid in hand, he painted the picture in the first place.