One of the things I have missed during the last year has been our family holiday to Conistone in Wharfedale, about three miles up the Dale from Grassington in some beautiful countryside. Normally over twenty of us spend time in communal living, there is no television, so we entertain ourselves, chatting, catching up on each other’s stories, sitting and reading, walking out in the countryside, and a few of us spend our time making jigsaw puzzles. I seldom make jigsaw’s these days and I love sitting and sifting through the pile of pieces and gradually watching the picture develop. Sad as I may seem, there is little more satisfying than finding that illusive piece that we had convinced ourselves had been omitted from the box or had been dropped on the floor somewhere and the ultimate feeling of inserting the final piece can be the most satisfying of al, the mark of a job well done, of wholeness, of everything being in its place, I love it!
The jigsaw puzzle is for me a wonderful metaphor for life and whilst I think that in this technological age of the twenty first century, sitting down with a box full of misshapen tiles, all designed to lock into their own unique place, with sole purpose of putting them together, then breaking them up again might seem pointless to many, when we can be entertaining ourselves playing far more exciting games in virtual reality, I still believe that there is value in handling the pieces, creating a strategy for the task, be it building the perimeter first, or pulling out all the pieces that clearly make up an important element of the whole picture and systematically stotting each piece in its place.
The worst thing is when you have almost completed the puzzle and discover that a solitary piece is absent, there is something imperfect about the whole thing. I feel that as communities we build up the jigsaw puzzle of life, our family puzzles, our work-life puzzles, our neighbourhood, Church, whatever, we are each unique pieces, with our individual shapes and colours and it doesn’t matter how important or insignificant we might feel, we each have a place to fit and the picture is only ever complete, when each one of us is in our place. We are at an important point in the journey through this Covid experience and maybe it feels to you at the moment as though your life is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces all over the place and figuring out where things go now is a challenge. We will all be engaged in the coming weeks in the task of putting life back together again.