God's Amazing Puzzle

Thinking back on our journey I realized that there are many similarities between it and the process of building a puzzle. God has been handing us pieces pretty much during our entire life. I guess the most challenging part about building this puzzle is the fact the we have no idea what the picture looks like when we start. So, initially we need quite a bit of guidance to get going and this normally comes from fellow Christians who have already made some progress with their own puzzles.

As we grow in our relationship with God we gain confidence and are able to start placing some of the pieces all by ourselves. Not all pieces fits in straight away (actually most don't), but normally we are able to put them down in more or less the correct area. As parts of the picture start to unfold we can get quite excited to see it and immediately reach for the next piece. Then there are also the times that we get distracted by the world and lose interest . . . while God patiently waits for us to take the next piece from His outstretched hand.

Sometimes He would hand us a piece which is really hard to place. We would put it down in the area where we think it might fit, just to pick it up a bit later again thinking that maybe it rather belongs to another part of the puzzle. I have even went so far as to tell God in no uncertain terms that He has made a mistake, got confused and handed me a piece from a different puzzle. When He gently persisted, I argued that He does not know me because if He did He would have known that that particular piece does not fit into my picture of happiness.

The reality is that God never make mistakes and therefore wouldn't take any pieces back. He does not want our puzzle to be spoiled by one missing piece when we finish the puzzle. Those of us who have build a puzzle with a missing piece or two knows how terribly disappointing it is . . . it is almost impossible to feel completely satisfied when the completed puzzle has a missing piece. The piece that I referred to above took me close to 7 years to accept as part of our puzzle and a further 3 years to place. Praise God that that piece will not be missing when we finish the puzzle.

Reflecting on the past year's journey

Firstly we've decided to write this in English since some of our friends with whom we've shared our journey over the past year had to use Google Translate to follow the blog in the past and we do not want some things to get "lost in translation".

Secondly, the primary reason why we have decided to capture our "reflecting on the past year" in writing is primarily for ourselves, to remember God's guidance and provisioning as we've been discovering how His "divine conspiracy" has been playing out in our lives.

A good friend of us uses the analogy of a roller coaster ride to explain what it is like to go on a journey with God to search for and live out the purpose for which He created us, with unparalleled attention to detail, as David describes it in Psalm 139 (See below).

Although I agree that a roller coaster ride is probably the best analogy in the physical that can be compared to a journey with God, I strongly suspect that it does not even come close to the exhilaration of journeying with God and I believe that we are not even scraping the surface of our journey as yet.

During a roller coaster ride in a short space of time you typically go from laughing and wildly throwing your arms in the air enjoying the wind through your hair to anxiously going into the brace position with your eyes closed and for a brief moment actually fearing for your life. It is because of those anxious times that we have decided to" put our fingers to the keyboard", so that we can remind ourselves that God has been faithful before and because of His unchanging nature He will remain faithful until the end.

Psalm 139 (ESV):
"Psa 139:13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
Psa 139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
Psa 139:15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Psa 139:16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Psa 139:17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! "