The Puzzle Maker

I used to love to put puzzles together, big ones that had lots of small pieces that I could fit together until a beautiful picture emerged. There is no room currently for anything else to be on any surface in this house so for the time being no real puzzles. But I saw something tonight that let me see how God is putting His own puzzles together and what the picture might be. 2 Chronicles 16:9  “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.” We see from this scripture that God looks at us and searches for those that have faith in Him so that He can strengthen and help.

Now back to the puzzle. Recently I walked into church and encountered some people who have become dear friends, while I was talking to them two others came up, people I have seen and maybe spoken to but this time we had a meeting of the souls so to speak, because they identified with some things I had been going through and I felt a real connection to them, so I will call them new old friends. I sang and looked out at the congregation and saw other new old friends and long term old ones too, so what’s my point?

We are all very different. We have different colors of skin and hair and we do various things in our life. Some have jobs as law enforcement, others home makers and care takers. Some of these people laugh easily (that would be me) and are loud (guilty sometimes), while some are shy and quiet. Then there are folk who I actually dread to encounter because there is generally a scowl or a glance that silently says, “don’t speak to me“. Have you ever been in an airplane and seen the landscape from high above the clouds? It starts to look like a patchwork quilt, or can I say a puzzle?

As we all buzz around and go from place to place I imagine that as God is looking at us from His heavenly vantage point we begin to take on the look of a puzzle with the pieces running all round trying to find the place they fit into perfectly.

I read a story once about a missionary who worked with some American Indians that were weaving beautiful blankets. He had told his wife how lovely the pictures the woven pictures were. He took her into one of the rooms where the ladies were working and the looms were turned up on their side so that as the missionary’s wife looked at them all she saw was various colors of thread crisscrossed in odd ways and there were bits of ends of the thread dangling from knots on the back of the material. She turned to her husband and whispered to him that she was unimpressed with what she was seeing. He simply walked over to the loom and turned it over, her mouth fell open as she saw the most breath taking mountain vista complete with a stream, trees and two deer looking as if alerted by the eyes now looking at them.

The way we see our friends, our daily lives, homeless folk, the people that work in the grocery store, carry our mail, take care of us in emergency rooms, dental offices, etc., is like looking at the underneath of that blanket, all of us making various bits and pieces of different colors and fabric to come together and make one beautiful picture to God, a picture of His children.

I hope that to Him our puzzle is like one I saw, if you looked up close it was as I have already described us, all different people red, black, yellow, brown, white, and as you pulled the picture further away from your vision all these people who were fit into their perfect places made up one very beautiful face, the face of Jesus. I don’t know where I fit into the puzzle but I hope it would be in the picture of His eyes, the very eyes that watch after us so carefully, and sees us in our need and who sheds a tear with us in our sorrow.

I hope this makes as much sense to you as it does to me, and I hope that you are standing next to me in our little section of the puzzle. We can see the underneath side of our personal lives, but God sees the completed picture from above and we are really beautiful!