Puzzle Pieces

I knew an Autistic man once who was amazing when it came to puzzles. He could take any puzzle, look at the picture on the box, dump the pieces on the table and know where all the pieces went without ever looking at the picture again. Even the most complex and large puzzles were not a challenge. On the flip side to that, if there was a piece missing he would get highly upset trying to find it but even if he didn’t he was able to do the rest of the puzzle, missing piece and all.

My grandparents always had puzzles around. They had a table out on the porch where they would spend a great amount of time reading and putting these together. Now I can’t say that I spent a lot of time helping them but I did have one very memorable day when I destroyed one badly. We had a rather large amount of snow one winter and as always the snow banks went all the way to the roof of the house and being a very typical wild kid, I thought that taking my sled up on the roof and sliding off would be great fun. It was until I discovered that the house let off just enough heat to melt the snow right next to the window on the porch and it gave way. I suddenly found myself sliding through a window, boots first, right onto the table that had the puzzle on it. Pieces flew everywhere and the only thing my grandmother said was; “well there goes that puzzle.” I don’t think that they ever found all the pieces.

Personally I love puzzles. I haven’t put one together in a while because it always seems like I buy a puzzle and either there is a piece or two missing or I lose one almost  instantly into some dark void as I’m opening the box. Sure I can put it together, but it’s not going to look right without all the pieces.

I wonder how many of us go through life thinking that we are one of those missing pieces. We think to ourselves that we are nothing because we haven’t done all the good that Mother Teresa has or we are not some great Biblical scholar or Rabbi and so therefore we are nothing but discarded and forgotten pieces. Perhaps you consider yourself to damaged and broken, too young or to old, I don’t really know but I do know this; G-D has created you for a purpose and that purpose may not always be evident to you and me, but He has one for all of us. 

Consider for a moment just how many people you interact with in a day. Every one of those people that you interact with is a part of the great puzzle and they interact with others and it just spreads from there. It is impossible to not be a part of that puzzle. There is a good chance that I don’t know you, yet G-D is using this medium to connect us together in this puzzle. The only way to avoid being in this puzzle is to have never been born.

Psalm 139 asks a really simple question; “where can I go from your presence” the answer is simple; nowhere. He is always there and He sees us in the big picture. You are not a disregarded piece of the puzzle, without you the puzzle cannot be complete.

I already know what some of you are thinking; how can we be a part of the same puzzle when we don’t see eye to eye on the things of G-D? Where has it ever been written that before the time when G-D’s kingdom is established, that we are all going to agree with each other? The only time I see it is when all the nations go up against Israel and G-D destroys them for doing so! In Genesis chapter 11 you have the whole world coming together to defy G-D and G-D scatters them to the four winds and confuses their language. Maybe, just maybe, having the same view of things isn’t always so good.

Going back to the puzzle analogy, how many of the pieces are the same?  If all the pieces were cut the same way and all had the same design on them wouldn’t that really defeat the purpose of building a puzzle?

The bottom line is simply this; we are all a part of G-D’s puzzle. We are all a part of the big picture that He is putting together. We may think we are discarded or of no importance, but, as I said earlier the puzzle cannot be complete without you.

Shalom,

Ignacio