Blog 161 – 11.13.15

My Mom and Dad enjoyed putting jigsaw puzzles together. I have carried on that family tradition. To me it is fun to wile away the hours working a puzzle especially when the weather is cooler and less inviting outside. And don’t get me wrong it is work doing a puzzle and after the edges are done it can be slow going piecing it together.

I remember an illustration I heard about a puzzle in a sermon years ago that might fit in a blog about puzzles. A man was attempting to put together a globe puzzle and became so frustrated that he tore apart even the part he had completed and stormed out leaving the whole mess on the dining room table. Later when he returned from the walk he had taken to cool off he found the puzzle completed on the table. He was quite surprised and he ask his young daughter how she was able to put it together so fast. She replied, “It was easy, Daddy, there was a picture of a man on the back of the pieces and when you put the man together the world just came together.”

Often times we live and act like the line from Bad Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce. He sings that after Leroy’s fight with Big Jim that Leroy “Looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.” We aren’t really missing that important piece that makes the puzzle whole we are just in denial that it is in us.

Many people think there is a soul mate out there for each of us. It is a lovely romantic notion and I love a good love story. But if you are looking for something or someone outside yourself to complete you are setting yourself up to be disappointed and that is a terrible burden to lay on someone else.

I have a friend who has been married over twice as many times as I have (But who’s counting, probably a lot of people that need to get a life of their own .) But I wonder if is she a greater romantic than I am or just a slower learner. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Please don’t get me wrong, people even married couples can and do have long, lasting, and healthy relationships but they are seldom based on need.

The seeming missing piece is not missing at all. That all important piece of the puzzle is God and he is waiting inside you to be your all in all. You don’t even need to ask him to come in to your heart he is already there waiting for you to recognize Who and Whose you truly are. It is always a joy when that last piece of the puzzle comes together.

You friend, fellow traveler, and lover of puzzles,
David White