Jigsaw Puzzles

Ever try to explain something and the words or thoughts just seem to be all jumbled together?

That's how I feel today.

There's something floating around in this beany brain of mine, but it's all mixed up; it seems that it's a mass of thoughts rolling around in there but the result seems to be confusion... like a jigsaw puzzle. All those pieces laying in a pile... some laying flat, some on their ends, some upside down. Each piece is important, yet it seems confusing.




But you know that once all those pieces get into alignment, get snapped together with it's matching pieces, the picture begins to form. Keep going, keep aligning and snapping together, and you'll have a picture, a clear picture.... the whole thing comes together with beautiful clear results.





Today, I have puzzle pieces laying in a mess. But each piece, I know, is important and significant, and as I keep picking up one piece at a time and fitting it to it's proper place, a picture will unfold. Sometimes it's a puzzle of 100 pieces, and sometimes, like today, it seems as though the puzzle is the largest jigsaw puzzle I've ever tried to sort through.




I wanted to blog about something today, but I just couldn't get my mind wrapped around it.... how to convey it in words..... how to make it understandable.... I knew it had something to do with prayer, and also there's some stuff about 'trust' rolling around in there, but it just wasn't 'coming together'.




Then I read today's post from A Holy Experience. It touched on some of the things that are going through my head. Here are two excerpts from Ann's post:

It is not that we need to stop living and then pray. We must come to pray… so we can start living. There is no real life apart from prayer. Isn’t relationship the only reality? Thus prayer, relationship with God, is the ultimate reality. Anything without prayer, anything apart from God, is the false life. I have thought it hard to stop the flow of my life at fixed times during the day, to pray. But it’s not about stopping. It’s about coming. Coming to God is only hard if we'd rather to come to our own idols.......

Prayer is not formality but soul conversation. A conversation we come to…. and never want to end, the nakedly frank conversation that lets the hurt and the frustrations and the love hang all out, the talk without ceasing that we have with God while we hang out the laundry, stir the soup, cut the lawn, drive for errands. The conversation with tears, with heart, with eyes, with pen, with ears.

[To read Ann's entire post, please click here: A Holy Experience .]

Once my puzzle pieces start coming together, it will be good for me to 'show' you my puzzle, my picture.

And maybe our puzzles never get completely finished until we see Jesus face to face. Maybe our lives are just one big puzzle that keeps coming together as we press on, as we keep adding just one more piece.

But isn't that the key to completing a jigsaw puzzle? Doesn't happen all at once... it's piece by piece, little by little, bit by bit.....

....and it all comes together,

...and it's then that we'll see the whole picture.

I'll be truly glad when my 'picture' comes together.