Puzzled

The kids in our kindergarten class really seem to enjoy puzzles. I enjoy watching them and talking with them about what they are doing.

Over the years, I've noticed that they all do the same thing. A kid will try a puzzle piece in a particular place. He (or she) will think the shape or the color is right and will try it. It won't fit. He will try it in another place or lay it aside. Then, a mere minute or so later, he will try to place the same piece in the same wrong place. This can happen several times as he is working on his puzzle.

As I watched this phenomenon play out again recently, something popped into my mind. A few lines from a poem I wrote ages ago:

My life is like a jigsaw puzzle and the pieces don't seem to fit.
The more I look at each and every piece, the more confused I get.

And then I thought about our lives at this particular point. I keep looking at individual pieces. I keep trying to place those pieces in the same places that didn't work the first (or second or one-hundredth) time.

God has given us all these different pieces, leading us through all these different experiences to get us to the place we are now. We are trying to wedge those pieces into the place we think they fit. But they don't.

God sees the bigger picture. He knows how all these pieces fit together to fulfill His will. We need to keep collecting pieces and following when we see where He is placing them.

Maybe that teaching or writing or editing or other experience doesn't fit in that "logical to us" place. Maybe it fits into a greater place that we don't even know yet.

A particular phrase from Ephesians 3:20 keeps coming to mind: [He] who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us. More than we can ask or think. Some translations say "ask or imagine."

I don't know about you...but I can think and imagine all kinds of things. And God is able to do above and beyond anything I can think of, as His power is at work.

I'm not sure how all these puzzle pieces will fit together. But God's big picture is glorious. We must trust, wait, and stop focusing on all those little pieces.

More than we can ask or think. I'm so excited.