Puzzler

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV)

Puzzles have become the craze at my office ever since Human Resources started forcing us to take a lunch break. We are a bunch of workoholics, often skipping the meal or eating at our desks while working. I guess it is because we love our job. Well, maybe it has something to do with being compulsive. That takes me back to the activity mentioned earlier, because I am convinced, you have to be a tad bit compulsive to be a successful puzzler. Thirty minutes is really not enough time to go anywhere or do anything. Most of us bring our lunch. When the rule came down that we could no longer eat at our desks, we set up a folding table in one of the offices and laid out a puzzle to work while we eat. I think that first one was chosen with the boss (me) in mind because it was a pony looking over a fence with two cats on the rail. It was also only five hundred pieces. We worked on it off and on for a week or two. Soon, I was engrossed and even started taking my allowed fifteen minute morning and afternoon breaks which I never used to do. We finished the edge, the started on the middle. Finally, one afternoon, we all huddled around the table watching as the last piece was fit in its hole. We had a great celebration, pulled it apart, stuffed it back in the box and started a new one. This one I have little interest in however. It is a one thousand piece puzzle of several squares each with a snowman in it. It has little tiny pieces and is too hard for me. I can’t seem to make sense of which piece goes where as the patterns all overlap and intersect. When I look at it, the colors run together and nothing matches. I lost heart because I can’t figure it out. How often in my life, I do the same thing. I encounter problems or difficulties that overwhelm me. I can’t comprehend why they come or how to solve them. No matter that I know that God will use everything in my life to make me the person He wants me to be. No matter that I know that God can be glorified in my troubles. I still want to know why! These verses remind me that there are often pieces of my life that are unseen to me. Things that happen for a reason that I do not know, and I may never see the result. At least while I am here on this earth. That is okay as long as I fix my eyes on what is real and important, eternity. Every piece does not have to fit, the puzzle does not have to be finished. I just have to trust that God has all the pieces and someday, I will look back and see the picture, completed and whole.