Pick a Picture Puzzle

I enjoy putting together jig saw puzzles.  A good jig-saw puzzle takes time, but who cares? When I work on one I lose the sense of time. I’m in a bubble of bliss, safely exempted from the ruthless rules of conscience that would stand by and declare there are better things to do. 

First, I always pick my puzzle by the picture on the box and envision how good it will look full size when each piece is fitly snapped into place. There are many ways to work a jig-saw puzzle. Some like to make it more challenging by forgetting the picture on the box as they work on the puzzle. There are even some puzzles, I’ve heard, that have no picture on the box. I need to see what the end will be and I don’t mind taking a peek at the picture on the box now and then as it goes together. 

Like most jig-saw puzzle players I find the straight outside edges first. Getting the frame  together gives me a boost. Along the way I find myself setting pieces that look related in different areas and then I work on those, filling in by colors and patterns and shapes. When two larger groups have gone together and click into place, that, too, gives me a boost. 

Once I’ve set myself down for a spell by my jig saw puzzle I have already dismissed old finger-wagging conscience. I obey him most of the time, but this is a battle soon over when conscience gives in to reason. I do let him point to my watch at some time and agree to quit when he says, “Enough now.”  The “Just one more piece, please” ploy finally gives in to those so-called better things to do.  The nice thing about a big puzzle is that it is always agreeable. It is used to waiting. 

To me life in this world is, itself, like a giant jig-saw puzzle waiting for the pieces to find their unique places. The thing that keeps me working life’s puzzle is the assurance I feel that it will all turn out to be good in the end. I don’t judge it by the chaotic picture on the table. I know there’s a pleasant ending to it all.

Something tells me the whole picture of life as God intends it is right here and now but we don't see it yet. There's no picture on a box.  Like a baby, new to the world, we capture it, learn it, grow with it, and pursue it piece by piece. Guide books like The Holy Bible are great if we use them and don’t get bogged down with arguments or abandon them because we cannot completely believe.  

There’s something to be said, also, for the idea that at some point we see clearly enough that we simply give up the puzzle theory and break through to reality where we reflect the whole all at once, not in bits and pieces, but like a mirror, a big mirror. I don’t think that time comes until we’re ready for it. Maybe it will be like stepping onto a higher platform in space where we get a better picture. I like to call that platform Understanding.

While working the jig-saw puzzle theory, something tells me I, too, have a part to play in making the pieces of life fit, in painting the picture as well. We are artists, engineers, seekers of Truth, and explorers. We are not stuck in the puzzle. We have a part to play in this grand adventure. We’re given the challenge to work it out with the light that’s been given us. It’s God’s way of letting us engage with Him in the creation of His grand works. Like a father teaches his child how to swim or fish or play ball, or like a mother who shows her child how to make a lovely home and get along with others.

The puzzle now on my table is one of a farm yard, a farm with little buildings clustered around a farm house. Sheep wander around freely and there’s a goat and a cow and horse. Of course a dog and cat and chickens and ducks...you get the picture. I love the moments I spend with it and I know when I finish and the last piece is put in its place I’ll see it anew and say to myself, “How good it is! I’d love to come in. May I?” (I grew up in the country and I know a lot about farms, especially the small old-fashioned ones.)

Do you suppose God is still putting together pieces of His perfect heavenly creation, the one already created, already here, with the light He’s shining on it? If so, I don’t doubt He will again and again let us help, even insist that we help, to put the pieces together. Then we too will behold and declare the final picture to be “very good!” And it will not have taken any time at all because eternity doesn’t know about time. But that’s another story, another big chunk of the puzzle.