Fixing the puzzles
Martha Olawale
I was working on a puzzle my son made during his school’s parents’ conference, and although I got the first few pieces figured out fairly quickly, it wasn't easy completing the puzzle on time before the meeting started. I didn’t have a picture to guide me and had to rely on trying and trying again to figure it out. It was somewhat frustrating because it took longer than I expected. No matter how often I tried to use the wrong piece, it didn’t work until I connected all of them correctly.
Cornelius was a Pharisee, a leader, and a teacher of the scriptures, yet he didn’t have the complete picture of life. He had the pieces but didn’t know where to fix them. With his age and lifelong experience studying the scriptures, one would expect that he had it all figured out. However, he knew he needed Jesus to help him understand what it meant to follow God. He told Jesus in John 3:2, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”
Life is like a puzzle, and putting the pieces together requires understanding what the finished picture should look like. No matter how we try to force the pieces into the wrong spots, if it doesn’t fit, we’ll never get them right. It takes knowing God for life to make sense and following Christ to get the puzzles of life and eternity right. Until we reach that point where we acknowledge we need Christ to help us sort life out, we’ll keep fixing life’s pieces in the wrong spots.
Seeing the finished picture of my son’s puzzle warmed my heart. It highlighted his goals for the school year, helping me know how to channel my efforts to support him in achieving his goals. When we don’t know the accurate picture of our purpose, we’ll be running blind in life’s race until we abandon what we know to learn what Christ knows. He was there when the world was made and has witnessed every occurrence in history. He sees the big picture and knows where each piece of our life goes. God will make the picture clearer when we trust Him with all the details.
