Puzzle Pieces

A while back I was part of a group of guys that were speaking into
each other's life. Hearing one guy's story we began to group think
and to speak that he was in transition, meaning would move locales.
Later we discovered that he was in transition, within his current
context. We took puzzle pieces and tried to put them where we
thought they belonged. But we were wrong! Good thing he was willing
to move slowly and even look past our infinite wisdom.

How do we make sense of the parts of life? How can we know God's
leading and direction? It can seem as if we are holding pieces of a
puzzle and then try to put them into the picture as we would know it,
want it or wish it wasn't (that one is called anxiety). I Samuel 23
Saul is pursuing David and when he hears he is in a certain town he
says, "God has handed him over to me." Really? You are about to
kill an innocent man and now that he is in a town that you feel you
can trap him in you think God is behind it?

Funny how we can put pieces together and be sure that God is on our
side when in fact we have been contradicting God's patterns and
laws. We do have to put the pieces of life together to make a
puzzle. We do have to make sense of things and put them somewhere,
bring some order, some chaos. But when we assign God's motive to an
incident we may be stepping a bit to far. Perhaps that is why James
warns us to live each day at a time and say, "If the Lord wills we
will.... ".

I'm trying to be more discerning in putting puzzle pieces together,
to live in the truth that His ways are higher than mine and to be
wonderfully surprised at what the Lord can do. I still have to put
pieces in some order but I do so now a bit more asking and willing to
admit that the piece may not belong there. God may be doing
something very different and very good.