Daily Devotional

My wife and I have been doing a lot of puzzles recently. This may or may not seem like a perfectly normal thing to you, but for me it is highly abnormal. I don’t know why but I’ve never liked puzzles. I’ve watched people do them and watched them enjoy it, but I never understood it.

One day, my wife had a puzzle out that she was working on and for whatever reason I came and sat down at the table and started looking at the pieces. I found a piece that fit, and then another, and then another. We were talking while putting the puzzle together and piece by piece, minute by minute, we had spent an entire evening sitting and talking at the puzzle table.

Again, I’m new at this whole thing so I’m not saying this is the right way to puzzle, but my technique is to hold a piece up to the box and move it around till I find where it fits in the completed picture. Every so often, even with this technique, I come across a piece that I’m sure must be from a different puzzle because I just don’t see how it will possibly fit in this puzzle.

When I think of the times that I’m downcast, it’s often because there’s a piece in my life or the life of a loved one that doesn’t seem to fit. We can be staring at a piece of our lives and can’t imagine how it could ever fit in the completed picture. The bigger problem is that we don’t even have a completed picture of what our lives will look like years down the road, or even tomorrow. Really, we’re holding up a piece that seems out of place, but we can’t even see the completed picture.

This is why we’re called to trust in God. Not only is He faithful, but He also knows what He’s doing. He can see the completed picture. He knows where each piece fits. When life throws us a disappointing, discouraging, or confusing piece it’s easy to feel like it will never fit but God is not surprised when this happens, and He knows exactly how it all comes together. This doesn’t mean those tricky pieces of our lives will be fun or feel great, but it does mean that God can fit even the strangest pieces into the bigger picture. No matter what piece of your life you’re staring at now, remember to trust God for you will yet praise Him again.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.