Puzzles
During the wintertime, one of the pastimes I enjoy is solving puzzles. I enjoy the challenges of Mahjong puzzles as a “clear the brain” activity, and occasionally, I assemble a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle (usually having something to do with the Civil War or Lincoln or the last was of an I.U. basketball game.) In my office hangs a “picture mosaic” puzzle that when I finished it, a portraiture of Abraham Lincoln was the result. Each piece was an individual picture (or half of one) of a scene of the Civil War, but as jigsaw puzzles are designed, these pieces only fit in one location! It took me several weeks, and within them, a few “all-nighters,” but it is displayed in my office! What an exhilarating feeling overcomes you when you complete such a challenge. The greater the challenge, the greater the exhalation when you complete the project.
Have you ever considered your life as being a “puzzle?” Sure, it would be much more complicated than the most challenging of Mahjong puzzles and certainly contain billions more pieces than the most challenging of all jigsaw puzzles. If you wish the comparison, life and its challenges have vastly more complicated words than the most advanced of the NYT-famous crossword puzzles. But with extreme diligence and undaunted doggedness, life’s “puzzle” can be solved, enjoyed, and admired!
As with all difficult puzzles, it’s always best to start with the “border pieces.” First, the border pieces are easier to find as in jigsaw puzzles, they have the “straight edges” and in Mahjong, whether inside out or outside in, they are the most easily matched. Regardless, they give you a good start and increase your confidence as you progress. Sure, occasionally, you’ll spot something that you know goes in the middle and you joyfully set those pieces in the approximate location. But you’re like me, you’ll find yourself moving those inside pieces again and again as they just aren’t as precisely oriented as you thought they were. That’s life! Building the edges is sometimes a bit easier than building the view most desire to see. As with the puzzles, it takes time!
In some puzzles, I’ve been very tempted to “make the piece fit” because it is so close. I’m color-blind, so piecing puzzles together via color is very difficult; I always must go with the shapes and match their locations. In the Lincoln puzzle I mentioned, I truly felt I had the right pieces in two separate locations until I noticed just a slight gap in those two places. It wasn’t right but changing those two pieces with each other proved exacting. That’s life! Sometimes you have the switch the location of priorities, desires, or even people and obligations to make everything fit just right. The best advice is “God first, others second, and self, third”.
As you reflect on your life, there will be times when you wish you could return to those “beginner’s kit” puzzles. You remember: the ones that the border was already done and all you had to do was correctly insert the eight or ten giant pieces into the frame. But remember those wooden puzzles where they asked you to take all those shapes and insert them into their proper holes, doing it all in a very few seconds? Yes, I couldn’t do it right the first six or eight times either! But the more you did it, the better you got and the faster you did it, right? What changed? Simply put, you learned what goes where by sight! You memorized the pieces! Isn’t life like that as well? There are all kinds of situations where we’re asked to “put this together in a few weeks” and you frantically try, only to find you’ve jammed the square peg into the round hold again! What do you do? Well, we call it REPENT and learn from that sinful behavior to not do it again!
We could go on and on with such illustrations, but by now you get the point. But let me point out some more critical observations: First, while at times we grow so frustrated with puzzles, we either never complete them, or tell someone else to, we can’t do that with our lives! We’re given only one, and with it, instructions as to how to put it together correctly. (See closing poem.) The problem is most don’t read the instructions! What a shame to know we could have succeeded with absolute perfection had we only followed directions! What kept us from following the directions? Stubbornness, making us think we’re smarter than the challenge, or pride that wouldn’t let us think we could be beaten? Sure, we got angry about the situation and maybe even tossed it aside with an exclamation similar to, “I didn’t want to do it anyway,” which is a backdoor admission of failure! But the real shame is with life, you can’t throw it away and retain any semblance of joy and accomplishment. In life, you need to accept you did something wrong, and go back and make it right! It’s called REPENTANCE. And by the way, the book of instructions for all these “puzzles” is the Bible!
Isn’t it funny that fools and kings,
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
And simple folks like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
To each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass and a set of rules.
And each much build ‘ere life has flown,
A stumbling block or a stepping stone.
Indeed, life is a puzzle. But you must assemble your puzzle by yourself, with the instructions of the Creator. To do it correctly, simply follow the instructions. When completed, know the exhilaration of the greatest success you can ever achieve: being forgiven of your sins, added to the kingdom of Christ, and granted the promise of everlasting life with God the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit, and all the redeemed of all the ages! That’s an achievement worth gaining!