Is Your Life Pieces of a Puzzle?

Psalm 139: 15, 16 - My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Have you ever felt like your life up to this point has been a big jigsaw puzzle? (It's an analogy my family in particular should understand, since we all enjoy working them.)

The straight-edge, outer border pieces represent our values. They represent the framework of where we draw our lines, and they cannot change. They're a constant. Everything else in our life must happen within those borders.

The bottom of the puzzle, where there's usually a flower bed or grassy field, represents our foundation. It's made up of pieces of where we've been, what we've done, and things we've experienced. Often, we cannot understand why all those pieces were necessary or how they could become important later when each individual one was so insignificant by itself.

The middle represents where we're at now. It's the main picture, or focus, of the overall big picture. It's where we begin to sort out and put together several pieces into groups. Like a puzzle where we would put groups of pieces together representing say, a barn, a fence, a well, and a shed; this is where we group the pieces that represent our Christian walk, family, raising our children, homeschooling, etc.

The final part is the "sky", it's the goals that we reach higher to obtain within our lifetime. These really important things are above the day-to-day, they make a lasting difference in the lives of others, and are the last things in our lives to be completed (even in the puzzle, the sky is usually last).

Finally, we can see how all these smaller pictures, when combined, organized and put together by the Master builder, no longer represent a jumbled puzzle, something unsolved. Now they are a clear picture of our life, something that could never be completed without the Mighty Hand of the One who knew the picture before each piece was ever formed.

Only by God's guidance and wisdom will our lives now be complete. We may have a ways to go yet before it's completion, but now we can begin to understand the parts of our life and see the big picture.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father,

Thank you for the hope and joy you bring to this life.
So often our lives seem like a bunch of mismatched pieces, and we
struggle to make them somehow fit together and have meaning. We
need you to guide our ways and turn our paths so that in the end, we
are able to complete the wonderful work you destined for each of us.
You truly are the Master Creator. Trusting you know how everything
will turn out in the end, brings order and peace to our lives. We just
thank you for Your Hand in the little things of our daily lives.