Jigsaw Puzzle of Life

As we go through life, we all collect bits of information about various things. Some bits come from our own experiences, while others come from stories we have heard or read. These bits of information are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and each of us has the challenge of trying to assemble our own puzzle of life. How we assemble our individual puzzles helps each of us understand where we came from, what our purpose is, what visible and invisible forces affect us, and what our connection is to the people and things and forces around us. Based on our understanding, our world view, we try to live the good life, maximizing our happy experiences and minimizing our unhappy ones. Everybody does this, from penthouse dwellers in New York City to jungle dwellers in Papua New Guinea.

If I go to the store and buy a jigsaw puzzle, there are some things I can be sure about. First of all, the finished puzzle will have a well-defined border and all the pieces in the box will fit inside that border. Secondly, the label on the box will me how many pieces are in the puzzle, whether it be 100, or 250, or 1000. Thirdly, I can be very confident that all the pieces in the box are genuine, quality pieces and all will connect nicely to the other pieces, forming a complete, tidy puzzle. In the store-bought puzzle box, there won't be any pieces that don't belong to the puzzle. The puzzle of life is different. First of all there is no box. The puzzle doesn't appear to have a well-defined border, so I don't know how big or what shape it is supposed to be. I don't know how many pieces it is supposed to have, so I don't know when I will be finished putting it together. Throughout my life, I have accumulated thousands of bits of information, or puzzle pieces, but I don't whether I have enough pieces to complete my puzzle, or whether I have too many. I don't even know if all the pieces I have are of good quality and genuine, or whether some of them are phony, representing false or imprecise information. Some quality pieces that I collected may have gotten faded or deformed by going through the laundry of my brain, and so no longer fit well.

When I assemble a store-bought puzzle, I usually start by sorting the pieces into little piles of  pieces that seem to go together. I assemble each pile winding up with a bunch of  disconnected "islands" like a house, a mountain, a cloud, a tree, a face, or a fish. After arranging the islands how I think they ought to be arranged, I use the remaining pieces to connect the islands, until there are no more gaps. Likewise with my puzzle of life, I have assembled a hundreds of islands of understanding--American history, how to use a credit card, the Kingdom of God, what food is good for me, God's love for me, astronomy, Sudoku, my wife, and so on. Some islands have been connected to other islands, but some are still not connected to anything. Many of my islands have a lot of holes in them, because I haven't found the pieces that fit into the holes. And I have a lot of loose pieces left over that don't seem to fit anywhere yet. On top of all that, I am not 100% sure that I have correctly assembled the islands that I have.

But I am not alone in my struggle. The apostle Peter told about the Old Testament prophets, who  "searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing." Even though God gave them some very special pieces to their puzzle of life, he did not give them all the pieces, so they ended their lives with unconnected pieces.

There is a special Greek word mysterion that occurs a few times in the New Testament that is usually translated "mystery." In the ancient Greek world, it was sometimes used in a military sense to describe a general's complex battle plan. The general would share parts of the plan with each of his officers, so each officer would know enough to do his own part, but not enough to understand the whole plan. Each officer would then implement his part in faith, trusting that the general had a winning plan. It was not until the battle was won that the entirety of the secret plan was revealed to all the officers.

Paul uses this term in Ephesians 3:

the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. 6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. [Eph 3.4b-6, NIV]

God formed a secret plan at the beginning of time, and has been working on it ever since. In each age, as his plan is implemented, he shares additional pieces of the puzzle with key people, but he has yet to share all the pieces. That won't come until the end. Until then, I have to be content with the fact that I will never have all the puzzle pieces in this lifetime. But the Lord will make sure I have the pieces that I need to implement my part in his plan. So, even though I will never finish, I have the joy and challenge of working with the pieces I have.

There is one very key puzzle piece, a part of the mystery of God's will which Paul shares in his letter to the Ephesians which is "to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment–to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." [Eph 1.10, NIV] In my puzzle metaphor, that means that Jesus Christ needs to be in the center of my puzzle, and I need to eventually connect all of my disconnected islands directly to Jesus. If I am committed to this, then my life puzzle will come together a lot easier.