May 1999

Puzzled with Puzzles

On a recent family vacation, I took some time to work on a jigsaw puzzle. This was a special vacation activity my family had often done in my growing up years. It was an easy way to burn up those odd moments between meals, or while waiting to make another trip to the beach.

The puzzle I brought along for Easter break became a dynamic parable as I pondered some of the unanswered questions in my life. "Why...?" "How can I...?" "What about...?" "Why can't I...?" The specific questions I asked aren't all that important; (I suspect you have your own set!) But these and a host of other wonderings wandered through my mind as I fiddled with the puzzle.

I had to ask myself, "do I have a persevering faith?" One that goes through the ups and downs of every day life, not just a "good times" faith? Could I believe that God indeed "causes all things to work for good" (Romans 8:28) in these unanswered questions? What did I really believe? So if life were a puzzle, what kind of faith did I have?

Did I have a faith, for instance, that believed all the pieces were there, and that some malicious puzzle company employee didn't remove two pieces before sealing the box? A faith that knew the pieces were only for MY puzzle, and not another design? A faith that, one by one, things would fall into place? It took progressively less faith to believe this as the pattern came together, but in the beginning when I couldn't even find all of the edge pieces, I did wonder if that mythical puzzle company employee wasn't playing a trick on me!

It struck me as I was working on the puzzle that if I focused on the little piece I held in my hand (or the piece I was searching for at that moment) I would never get the puzzle together. Instead, I had to look at the whole picture and see the missing piece as still a part of it. I had to accept frustration as part of the puzzle. In fact, our vacation was over before it was finished, and I had to leave it undone for friends to complete! So I began to see that though I don't have the full picture, I can live in the "now and not yet" aspect of life and not let it drive me nuts. I can handle not having all the "pieces" to the questions that I want answered.

I realized that while you can not tell what the picture is when focusing on just one piece, you can still see the final product. Maybe it isn't as pretty a picture with ugly gaps of table showing through. Maybe a little detail is unknown or left out that would give it completeness. But the picture is still there. It is recognizable, believable, understandable. Just like life and those unanswered questions I had thought about.

Michael Kelly Blanchard, a Christian songwriter, author and performer, wrote about his frustration as a boy when he tried to view the world through a small window in his bedroom. A helicopter could fly overhead, or a flight of geese, yet he could not see them because of the limited view. He writes:

"...I had to accept the fact that though there was plenty of sky out the window, it wasn't the whole sky. In truth, it probably wasn't even half of it. ...For, you see, the view out the window is just a piece of the sky."

"When I look out my faith's window, though I might daily try to wash and clean its glass, increasingly there is much that is outside the vision of my belief's understanding... much for which my theology has no neat, clean answer. That, by the way, is not always so much the fault of the window as a characteristic of the sky."

That's it exactly, isn't it? My life of faith, an unfinished puzzle, is that "piece of the sky". I can believe in the promises God gives, and that He cares for all of my life's concerns. I can see His hand in its design and His love in the unanswered questions. As I've reflected on life's puzzles, I wrote a song about it. If you'd like you can read the lyrics here.