Puzzles

 July 5, 2021

The Lord has lately been working on me regarding my relationship with him. It is so very easy to almost imperceptibly slide from grace to works in our thinking. We gauge our relationship with God by what we are or are not doing instead of by our Father’s unending and undeserved love and grace. I’m finding that just being with God is hard. My natural inclination is, “What do I need to be doing today?” Not doing seems a waste of precious time.

I know enough about preaching to know that often, the goal I had in a sermon was not always what hit home in the congregation. Sometimes, the Lord takes a single word or phrase casually said and drives it home; that’s what he did for me yesterday. Brandon was preaching on spiritual gifts, but in doing so, mentioned a single word that grabbed me: “puzzle.” I don’t know how that word got into his sermon, but I know it was for me.

Life often seems puzzling as we try to figure out our purpose and God’s will. It’s summer now, so we don’t work on puzzles much these days. Of course, there are different kinds—word puzzles like crosswords, riddles, and word searches. There are number puzzles like Sudoku, and there are visual puzzles like jigsaws (my favorite). All puzzles have a few things in common that have life application.

1. All puzzles have patterns. They may not be discernible at first, but the pieces or components are always linked together in discoverable ways. If we cannot discern the pattern, we’ll not solve the puzzle.

2. All puzzles have place. Each piece of the puzzle has a specific place. In a jigsaw, some pieces may seem interchangeable, but there is only one way they fit together. Sudokus and crosswords work the same way.

3. All puzzles require patience. Often puzzles go unsolved because we run out of patience. A lot of trial and error goes into solving puzzles. We find a lot of stuff that doesn’t work before we discover what does.

4. All puzzles have particularity. I don’t like the number puzzles my wife adores; I can barely add and subtract, but she doesn’t like the jigsaws that I enjoy because she can’t see the visual patterns of shape, line, and color that are so important to solving them.

In life, until we patiently work to discern the patterns, we will never find our place in God’s plans. If we fail to look for the bigger picture, we will never see the patterns. Most puzzles have clues—the picture on the box of a jigsaw, the supplied numbers of a sudoku, the “across” and “down” columns of a crossword. God has given us his pattern in Jesus Christ; it is up to us to find our place in it, to patiently keep at it. The particulars of my puzzle are different from anyone else’s, but the Pattern is the same—Jesus Christ, and the clues are found in the Bible. It’s not always easy. Scripture tells us that there are secret things that belong to God, and to those to whom he chooses to reveal them (Deuteronomy 29:29 and Matthew 11:27). We are commanded to seek diligently, to apply ourselves to the puzzle. So I just keep looking at the picture on the box and fitting in the pieces until one day the puzzle will be done to God’s satisfaction. Hopefully, there will be no missing pieces, and the picture on the box will be replicated in my heart and life.