Christmas will once more be upon us in just a few short days. I imagine you all have family traditions. One of ours involves assembling a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle over the holiday.

The photo on the box's front cover will always show a facsimile of the finished product. But, when you empty the contents on the table and look at the topsy-turvey pile of disorganized, weird-shaped, multi-coloured, and often ugly pieces, you could tend to despair of the task before ever getting started. When you examine a single detached piece on its own, it is almost impossible to know where and how it will fit into the scheme of things. But, for the most part, we trust the integrity of the manufacturer, thinking that each piece must be in the box for a reason.

Isn't that just like the faith walk of the believer?

My wife always starts with the border of the puzzle to give it some definition. Occasionally, the rebel in me attempts to build the picture from the inside out. It is a painful and usually fruitless effort. There needs to be parameters, something to guide the construction process.

I also try to construct the project without looking at the picture. That, too, creates a fair level of frustration. It is hard to know what direction to take if you have no concept of what the end should look like.

In the puzzle of life, we have the parameters of divine Scripture and the testimony of a great 'cloud of witnesses' to give our lives dimension and structure and demonstrate the end product of our lives. The totality of what we know about God and His interaction with us comes from that same panorama of the whole of Scripture. We also have the faithful testimony of a multitude who have trusted their lives to the Word of God and proven its veracity. Just the cover picture on the puzzle box gives us a glimpse of what the project should look like when the task is completed, and so does the whole counsel of God through the Word of God and the testimony of the saints who have validated it.

By God's design, our life is assembled one piece at a time. Some pieces often seem incongruent to the whole. Even while reading this article, you may be dealing with one of those pieces in your life picture. Let me assure you that order will eventually rise out of chaos, clarity out of confusion, and the troubling pieces will find their proper place in God's greater dream for your life.

I have learned over many years that the incongruent, unpleasant-looking pieces I was convinced had no place or purpose were just as essential as any others to the completion of God's design for my life. They fit perfectly, right where, and as the Designer intended.

I also now understand that nothing randomly enters my life. Some things enter by my own foolish choices; some enter because I live in an unfriendly kingdom, some pieces represent high tones of colourful victory, and others the dark shades of evil intended to harm me. But God has seen all of that in advance. He redeems every circumstance and fits it perfectly into the masterpiece He calls my life.

I am also learning that the closer I get to the end of the puzzle, the clearer I can see how the completed picture should appear. The image on the box and the actual product begin to synchronize. I like what I see, and I am increasingly longing for the day of completion. Here, in my fourth quarter, when there are many more pieces in place than those which are left, I have greater confidence than ever that 'He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus' (Philippians 1:6). There will always be issues, problems, lack of clarity, and setbacks enroute to the finished product. Let's not be intimidated, defeated, or discouraged by things that, for the moment, don't fit or add purpose. We are in the hands of a competent God who knows and orders every piece of the puzzle. He is the One who drew the picture on the cover in the first place. And that picture is beautiful.

'For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do' (Ephesians 2:10).

Happy puzzling! If you need a puzzle to complete, c'mon over, have a glass of eggnog and help us with ours.

Merry Christmas, dear friends and colleagues in the Kingdom.

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