Every puzzle begins with an image, a picture that, when the last piece is put into place, suggests completion if not perfection. Over the years we attempt to assemble the puzzle of our life. Time and again the restless pursuit of emotional and spiritual peace compels us to take down the puzzle, look at the picture, and try to make sense of the puzzle of our life.

   The box is worn and yellow, its corners fragile from age. To our surprise, each time we attempt to assemble the puzzle, the picture seems to have changed. Perhaps it is missing a person. When death, divorce, or estrangement changes our life, we look different and feel different. We find that over time our naive emotions have changed. They are burnished by the experience of life, or irrevocably altered by the puzzle of life. We discern within the picture that our ideal of perfection is unattainable on this side of heaven.

   In Great Britain bank holidays and other national celebrations are marked by community festivals that often include a communal meal or elaborate tea. An unending table stretches down the middle of the high street to ensure that everyone who wants to join in has a seat at the table. The occasion is “come one, come all”, and for a day, an afternoon, or an evening there is something akin to shared joy.

   When we take down the puzzle of our life neatly stacked on the shelf, its unstated title is “the past”. Unceremoniously we dump the pieces on the long table that runs through the high street of our life. Memory suggests that the puzzle once had only 100 pieces. As with our life, over the years the number of pieces grows exponentially. What a jumble. What a mess. Will we live long enough to assemble the pieces and discover the message and meaning of the puzzle? Will we at last experience the soul-filling joy of real peace? Will the picture show that our inside and outside match?

   As we do the slow, laborious work of assembling the pieces, the story of years and decades begins to emerge. Often, what we thought happened is not at all what happened. We idealize or catastrophize events and people to align with our emotional memory. Characters are part of the puzzle because they are part of our life. Some of the people we have encountered in life are kind and beautiful, others are not. Some are part of the pesky background of the puzzle, others are more at the forefront of our life’s picture.

   Sometimes it is the lost pieces that hold the key to our story—pieces lying on the floor in plain sight, or those that mysteriously disappear into a pocket or sleeve, seemingly lost forever. As we look at the thousands of pieces on the table, one or the other lost pieces miraculously reappears. This is the seeking and finding part of working the puzzle, this is the seeking and finding part of life as we wait patiently for a completed picture to emerge.

   For many, puzzles are a cerebral pastime rather than an active quest to discover a story. The image that constitutes the puzzle of our life is never static. As we do the work needed to assemble the pieces, slowly but surely a picture takes shape, one that tells the truth about our life, one that demands honesty, integrity, and objectivity.

   The truth we claim when the puzzle is finished has the power to set us free—free from the past, free from the tyranny of those who have controlled and oppressed us, free from the frailty of our own self-perception. At the end of the day the overarching truth revealed by the picture is this—the power of God’s steadfast, never-failing love spans the continuum of our life. This the love of faithfulness that  sustains us through the thick and thin of life, this is the love of light that rescues us from darkness, this is the love of grace that leads us toward recovery, this is the love of mercy that triumphs over every manifestation of self-loathing and self-love.

   The Apostle Paul speaks eloquently about the puzzle of our life and how the picture changes as we grow in faith, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:11-13). When at last the puzzle of our life is solved, within the picture we see the true reflection of God’s love, mercy, and grace.Thanks be to God that one day we will know fully even as we have been fully known.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  
Lamentations 3:22-23