Puzzle Pieces

Have you ever bought a jigsaw puzzle at a garage sale? It’s kinda risky. With used puzzles, you can never be sure if all the pieces will be there. But…if you really like puzzles, it may be fun to give it a try.

Lets say that the puzzle pieces were simply in a plastic bag with no picture attached. Would you buy it then? Unless you are quite the adventurous type and you really, really liked puzzles, that sack of puzzle bits will stay right where it is.
Have you ever noticed that our lives tend to resemble a sack of puzzle bits? We have lots of parts and have to work frantically at times trying to piece it all together with out the benefit of a picture to go by.

Here’s the Good News: Jesus really, really likes puzzles. He is constantly checking out the ‘yard sales’ in hopes of finding another puzzle to put together. He even buys us with the full knowledge that some of our pieces are tweaked, tattered and torn. Some are missing. That’s okay, because if we are willing to be bought by the Lord it becomes His responsibility to fit all the pieces together.

Now, when I begin to work on a puzzle, I like to start with the outside parts. It seems to me that if I can get the outside finished, the inside of the puzzle comes together more easily. Jesus has a different strategy. He seems to know that the outside will take shape as the insides are worked on. And, since God has the finished picture for each one of us, He is able to work systematically in our lives putting all the right pieces in all the right places.

So, what does that look like from our point of view?
There is only one place in the Bible that God talks about making us like a finished puzzle. That is found in James 1. The word He uses is the Greek word, Holokleros. It means: Whole, having all its parts, sound, perfect. From holos, all the whole, and kleros, a part.

It is God’s intention to complete us. He knows what pieces are missing and which ones are damaged. It is our job to submit to His process. So lets take a look at James 1:2-4 and discover just what the method is that Jesus uses to ‘put us together’, or complete us. ‘Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.’ It is the testing of our faith that produces endurance and endurance is the instrument that God uses to make us complete.

Now, this is not to say that every time a trial comes into your life that you lie down and die in defeat. On the contrary. Trials come in order to expose just how complete we are, (or aren’t). It is when we endure through the fight with the joy of knowing that these trials didn’t come to defeat us, they came to complete us. That is why in Romans 8:28 we’re told that ‘God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.’ Making us complete is His purpose.

If we respond to our trials with the understanding that the Lord is putting us together, piece by piece we will not only receive a more focused picture of our own lives, but we will also catch a clearer picture of Jesus. In the end, we will discover that they are the same. The Father only has One picture hanging on His wall…..a picture of Jesus.

Senia Owensby
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