Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day. (Psalm 139: 13 -16, The Message Bible)

               I just know that you are all dying to know how my jigsaw puzzle is going – the one I mentioned a few weeks ago. You may recall that it is a 1000-thousand-piece puzzle featuring 350 or so of just the faces of Lego characters, all with different expressions and facial features, all in various colours of yellow, brown and black. It’s been a challenge but that is what I like when I am doing jigsaws.  

                I am getting close to being done. But I am down to a very hard, difficult stage. The majority of the faces are basically done. Now I am down to trying to find very little pieces of the faces to complete the puzzle. It is a little piece of an eye-brow here, a part of an eye there, maybe a tiny little corner of a mouth, a little stubble of a beard, a freckle or two. This is going to take some patience and perseverance to finish. But I won’t give up or stop until I am done.

                I wonder if God sometimes finds us, who are created in his own image, like a puzzle. It was originally a good and beautiful world.  “Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!” (Genesis 1:31) But does God look at the world made for humankind and see it like a jigsaw puzzle just coming out of the box – a jumble of pieces, some upside down, unconnected, a hodge podge that has no form or coherency, that needs sorting and organizing, that needs patience and endurance to put back together?  Does God look at our broken world right now and wonder, in frustration, whether he can put the pieces all back together again, to make it like he pictured it at the beginning, i.e. like on the lid of a puzzle box, so to speak.? When and how did the world fall to pieces?

                Our Psalm outlines the meticulous care which God gives to his world, especially the lives of humankind.  The Psalm affirms God’s intimate knowledge of each and every one of us. Like my faces in my puzzle, God knows even the little details of who we are and why we are and who we need to be. He knows us inside and out.  God knows where we belong. God knows when a piece is missing from our stories and he looks to find it for us. He understands our brokenness and fragmentation. He understands when we are trying to fit in, feeling upside down, trying to find our right places, to connect with others around us. No part of our lives is tool small, too insignificant, too unimportant, that God does not give us a helping hand to help us put it together. Like the hymn celebrates, “He walks with me, he talks with me, and He tells me that I am his own.”

                Back in the day, it was popular, for a while, to say “God doesn’t make junk.”  There is truth in that although I dare say that I wonder if there are times when God is exasperated, frustrated and might wish to put the “puzzle” that we are back in the box and back on a shelf somewhere. But that is not how God so loves the world. God has committed his own son to enable us to get our lives all together and just maybe then, we can help God put the world back to right, “thy will be done in earth as it is heaven.” God made man and woman to be pieces of his Creation, to be stewards of the world he created. He made us to work in partnership and collaboration to nurture love, peace, joy and justice between us, despite our differences and diversity. He has placed each one of us in his Creative masterpiece as a piece of the puzzle.

               “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10)

 Prayer:

Our loving Creator, we confess we sometimes fail to understand just how good and kind you are towards us.  We complain about our lives or how broken the world is. Help us to remember that you are still very close to us and have our ultimate welfare in your hands. Grant us the courage and the wisdom to be a part of your good will, that we, too, may become participants in helping you to build your Kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen.