I close my eyes for meditation. In the gray mist of sight behind closed lids, I see outlines of jigsaw puzzle pieces fitting together.
I close my eyes preparing for sleep. Yes, I see arrays of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
My wife and I have had a project for the past couple of weeks assembling a jigsaw puzzle. The exercise requires focus, observation, patience, mental clarity. This puzzle did not come with a photo showing the completed puzzle. It came with a short murder mystery story describing a scene. You are to figure out the scene and then conclude where the body is hidden, who did it, and how.
We finished it last night. I took a commemorative photo. It will rest on our table for a while until we take it apart and put it away.
There are many puzzles I’ve experienced.
Two colleagues and I joined to form a new magazine. We hashed out ideas, sometimes with considerable passion. The pieces came together. We built a top-rated magazine for the market we served.
Like many people, I puzzled over Paul’s letter to the Roman followers. Some theologians wrote huge works trying to tease out subtle meanings from each Greek word. Luther, Calvin, Wesley all saw pieces of the letter and built theologies.
I added some other study and thinking and the pieces fell into place. Don’t try to build grandiose theories. This letter is the ultimate spiritual development tract in the New Testament. Paul leads the reader from a state of being lost to a state of being in the state of God’s grace. Not stopping there, he continues with ideas on how we live in the state of grace.
I have been part of a team led by my wife for the better part of a year. Called Rise Above, the ministry hopes to reach out to people suffering from emotional hurt and support them on the return journey to wholeness. At our last meeting, the pieces came together. Just like after the pieces came together forming the magazine, I realized that now I had to get an actual magazine produced and into the mail. Now, we have to actually meet with those people.
When the jigsaw puzzle is done, it’s done. When we assemble the pieces of our project, that’s just the beginning.
Faith Venture 
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