Growing up, my sister loved jigsaw puzzles...and to be honest I couldn’t stand them. I couldn’t stand how long they took, I couldn’t stand how there was only one way for the pieces to fit together, and it drove me crazy that looking at an individual piece didn’t tell you anything about what the complete picture would look like. There were few things that frustrated me as much as trying to do a puzzle, and even to this day, it’s not something I would choose to spend my free time doing. However, what puzzles have taught me about trusting in the Lord is something that has made me forever a lover of jigsaw puzzles.
Dictionary.com defines a jigsaw puzzle as a set of irregularly cut pieces of pasteboard or wood that form a picture or design when fitted together. Put simply, a jigsaw puzzle, in the least cliché way possible is a picture of our life. Each individual piece is like every event that takes place in our lives. These pieces could be decisions we’ve made, people who have impacted us, births or deaths, changes in our families, the hard things, the gifts, and everything in between. So often in this day, we have trouble understanding the purpose in the hard parts of life. We have a hard time accepting things that aren’t comfortable and easy. This is a problem because when we wholeheartedly follow the Lord, life is guaranteed to be fulfilling but nowhere does it say that it’s going to be easy.
An individual piece of a jigsaw puzzle has color, sure, and by looking at just one piece, you can guess as to the part it may play in the overall picture. You can guess what good might come out of something hard, and you can guess what role a particular blessing has played in your walk with Jesus. But there’s also a good chance that you will guess completely wrong. In our walk with the Lord we are given one piece of the puzzle at a time, and we have no idea how our experiences today are going to mold us and shape us to fit in our whole puzzle of life when we look back on it. Philippians 4:7 says that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. He knows exactly where that piece is going to fit, and more importantly he knows that the puzzle isn’t going to be complete without that piece.
The other thing about jigsaw puzzles is how no piece of the puzzle has all straight perfect edges. They’re jagged, they’re abnormal, and alone, the shape doesn’t make sense. So many times, I feel like a jagged mess. Steps on the path to following Christ are rough and hard. Questioning hardships, being “unlucky”, and living in regret is discounting the fact that we are building a puzzle. Individually these hardships don’t make sense; they don’t seem fair. But the Lord says “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). He gives us peace to know that in the end, this piece of the puzzle is going to fit in with all the rest and things will make sense. So often we wish for straight edges in our lives rather than praying for the Lord to give us jagged edges and praying that we learn to rely on Him for His strength through the rough patches. Our simple human minds who want to be in control and all-knowing, and so often have a hard time accepting that the jigsaw puzzle doesn’t work with straight edges. Our mind can’t completely understand the jagged edges, which is by design; our human mind isn’t supposed to be able to understand. If we understood every jagged edge, where would our need for trust in Him be? Without faith and trust, a relationship with Him wouldn’t be necessary. By giving up the control of things that happen to us in this world, we are able to “set our minds on things above, not on Earthly things” (Colossians 3:2). When we are able to do that, accepting and even embracing the jagged pieces can be a source of pure joy we have as believers.
In Isaiah 43, the Jews are hoping and asking for deliverance from Babylon and the response of God is “forget all that, that is nothing compared to what I am going to do” (Isaiah 43:18). How many times a day do we limit the Lord and forget that he can “do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). We put him in a box as to what we expect Him to be putting together, and we forget that it’s impossible for us to even guess the final picture that the whole puzzle is creating when we are looking at one individual piece at the time. In the end, relying on the word of God as a lamp to our feet (Psalm 119), we are guaranteed to end up with a puzzle that completed, and it is a more incredible picture than anything we ever could’ve come up with on our own. Let us keep our eyes on what is unseen and pursue a faith with a fire that refuses to be blown out. Sometimes, in the end, the harder the puzzle is, the more rewarding it is to put in the last piece and have the whole thing make sense. Although that final piece isn’t put in the puzzle until we are standing at the gates of heaven, it’s still a day we can look forward to, and it can be a source of hope as well as an opportunity to put our trust in a God that cares more about our puzzle being complete than we ever could.
