I have just completed a jigsaw puzzle, not the amazing type with hundreds of pieces, or of a beautiful scene nor a picture from the past with an old stream train or cars going through it. No, not even one of those fiendishly difficult puzzles of a plate of baked beans, or spaghetti with every piece looking the same. No, the jigsaw I put together was that for a child, a playmat for little wooden houses, at which point you can be forgiven for thinking that I may just be losing the plot, a lack of going to the beach may have got to me!
However, when putting it together I realised that there was no picture to guide me, I did not know which way was up, and what I was trying to create, working out what the picture might end up being was a large part of the battle to put it together. Then in a moment I realised that one of the central elements was upside down, all I had to do was to turn the pieces I had linked together upside down and suddenly it all worked, and they fitted together.
So, it was not a difficult picture, it did not take me many minutes to put the pieces in the right place, but there was something fundamental which struck me, that I needed to turn a whole section the other way around. It made me think that we do not know the pattern we are working on in life and often we view life in one way only, we expect to work, to have a family, for our parents to grow old etc. Without really knowing it we have a plan that we expect God to stick with and we think that he should follow our rules.
Often life does not follow the pattern we would dictate but sadness happens, we lose our job, our family move far away, our parents are taken ill, and we feel like I did when the pieces were all the wrong way up. We feel uncertain what the picture should look like, we feel concerned that it will never make sense again, and then we look to God, and often he will say to us that we are just not seeing it the right way, that in the midst of the uncertainty, and the worry He is there with us and He will show us a new way to look at our life and a new way to see his world.
A prayer
Almighty God in the times of uncertainty may I turn again towards you, help me to be honest with you when I am worried, and may I listen to the prompting of your Holy Spirit giving me a new vision of a life lived with you.
Amen