A Puzzle

Have you ever put together one of those 3000 piece puzzles? You get it home from the store and you clear the dinning room table. You anticipate the time to work on it and then finally, the time arrives. You open the box and there, in that cardboard box, are thousands of tiny, colorful, funny shaped pieces of cardboard. If you’re like me, you always start by looking for the corners, the edges, and the easily recognizable pieces first. You try to build the outline and arrange those recognizable pieces in the places they belong by looking at the box cover. Once this is accomplished, you begin the daunting task of sorting through those countless pieces of blue sky, blue water, green trees and shrubs, green grass, and all the other hard to identify pieces. Slowly but surely an image begins to appear. Just like on the cover of the box.

Have you ever gotten to the end only to find one or two pieces are missing? How can this be? Surely the pieces are here. Maybe they fell on the floor? Maybe the cat or a child got one while you were out of the room for a brief second? You look and look. You may even yell at family members to help you look. You scrounge around on the floor looking. You walk the path you walked to the kitchen, bathroom, front door, or wherever. But alas, to no avail you realize that the piece is no where to be found. How could the store sell you an incomplete puzzle? Why would the manufacturer not have better workers who check to see that no piece is missing?

It’s amazing, but many times that missing piece is one of the insignificant pieces. Maybe it’s a simple blue piece of the water, or a few tiny leaves. One thing is sure, the place where it goes stands out in the huge almost perfect picture.

We are like the pieces to a huge puzzle. Life is the puzzle and we each are a part of the grand picture. We may not be a corner, a part of the edge, a part of the windmill, bridge, or other recognizable object, but we each have an important place in the grand scheme. And like that little, seemingly unimportant piece that blends in almost unnoticed, we fill a spot that no other piece can fill. God can use everyone of us to fill a void that is “us” shaped. No matter how insignificant we may feel, if we are missing, it stands out to others. They may not notice us unless we are missing, but rest assured, they will notice if we are out of place. God has given us significance even if we blend in un-noticed.

Thank you Lord that we each have value that no other person can fill. Teach us to understand just how important we are, even if we can’t yet see it.