Recently I’ve rediscovered my love of puzzles. I grew up having puzzle books and jigsaws in various stages of completion. Give me a good logic problem and a pencil, or a jigsaw with a compelling picture, and I could be lost for hours. Somewhere along the way, life happened and I forgot that part of myself, until one day recently I was looking for something else and came across an abandoned puzzle book. About the same time, my husband and I decided to finally put together a jigsaw puzzle we had made from a picture of our favorite place in the world. Suddenly, I was off to the races with my puzzle brain firing on all cylinders.
As I’ve processed the frustrations and joys of puzzling again, I am being constantly reminded of the parallels to my own sanctification. It’s a slow process that doesn’t make sense at all by only focusing on each individual piece. Only as the pieces connect does the picture come into focus - and the only way I know to put the pieces together is to keep checking the completed picture on the front of the puzzle box. In fact, we are currently working on a puzzle that doesn’t have the full picture on the front - and our progress was greatly hindered until we opened the “hint” that showed us the full picture.
Jesus is, of course, the full picture of what our sanctification is about. When we are saved, the boundaries (edge pieces) are put into place. Everything else that happens from that moment on is within preset limits determined by our Maker toward the goal of sanctification - Christlikeness. But the way He puts the picture together, making us look more and more like Him, is different for each of us. For some, He may focus on this corner section, then that one; for others, it may feel like He’s just joining random pieces that make so sense until one day he puts all the smaller sections together. I don’t know about you, but I tend to focus too much on the individual pieces and trying to make two pieces fit that belong in totally different parts of the puzzle! I need reminders that my part is to cooperate with the process and remember that only He can make sense of each piece within the big picture. I also need others - sometimes I can’t get a section to work, but my husband can fit something together in minutes that I’ve worked on for an hour!
I’ve just finished another in-depth study of Psalm 119 and I’m realizing that some of the same lessons apply to Scripture as well. When I first began my journey in God’s Word, I began with the frame - what is God’s Word? Is it trustworthy? What are the limits of what is “Scripture”? Then within that, I began working on pieces and trying to fit them together. Many times I’ve had to move on and hope that section makes more sense later (Ezekiel 40-48, anyone?), or struggled with how a specific passage fits into the larger whole (Song of Solomon, I’m looking at you). But as I have digested more and more of God’s Word, I’ve seen connections that I didn’t see the last time, asked questions I didn’t ask before. The harder things begin to make more sense. And like my jigsaw puzzles, I’ve learned that at the end of the day, Scripture is painting one beautiful picture, and His name is Jesus.
So if you are struggling through an area of Scripture, or if sanctification is not making sense right now, remember this is a process. Keep checking the final picture - go back and read the Gospels and behold Him once again. He is the point of Scripture and the aim of God’s sanctifying work in your life. Until Christ is formed in you fully, He will keep making sense of the puzzle, one piece at a time, using His word and His people in the process.
