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by Rev. Leanne Masters,
Lincoln Southern Heights
There's something about puzzles....the jumble of pieces, the endless sorting of order into chaos, that feeling of satisfaction when you get just the right fit. There's something soothing and comforting about the rhythm of putting together a puzzle.
Puzzles are a collection of smaller images and patterns that come together to make a larger picture, piece by piece. The larger the puzzle, the more likely it is to be a communal activity, where many hands and eyes work together, working on individual sections (and occasionally adding to another as they find the pieces that fit) until the sections merge together to form the whole.
Puzzles are a study in patience. You can't just shove any two pieces together, but have to sort through them to find the right fit, otherwise, you damage the pieces and mar the picture.
Puzzles take time, sometimes more time than you would like, as you work to put that picture together...but as time goes on, you begin to get more excited about the work that you are doing, as you can begin to see what the whole might just look like as you put the pieces into place.
In many ways, a church is much like a puzzle. We're a collection of smaller images and patterns coming together to make the larger picture, piece by piece and person by person. We cannot build the church individually, but it takes all of us working to build the various programs and activities and events as we are called to do so, until the programs merge together to form the whole.
And a church is a study in patience as it's not developed and grown overnight, and the elements of what we do cannot be just jammed together any which way...but through diligence, time, and dedication we will eventually see the image of where and who God is calling us to be emerging from the jumble.
There's something about puzzles as they come together, isn't there? I'm so
honored and blessed to be a part of the puzzle of the church, to be a
pair of hands putting pieces together. I urge you to see where
your hands, talents, gifts, and skills can be used to put these pieces together,
too, as we continue to build and grow our community together.
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