Life's Puzzle

When I was a kid, I had three brothers.  My sweet sister was not born until I was sixteen years old.  And my childhood was before cell phones and the internet and smartwatches and … well you get the picture.  We had four Norman Rockwell puzzles that we worked over and over again.  The odd thing was that all four pictures were cut from the same die: all of the pieces were interchangeable.  The first couple of times, we looked at the picture on the box lid to figure out which pieces went where.  But soon, we didn’t even need the lid.  We even knew which of the four puzzles each piece went to.  Hey, is your life like one of those puzzles?  So often we think our lives should turn out perfect, just like the beautiful picture on the front of the puzzle box.  But when we begin to go through life, it doesn’t turn out the way we thought it should.  We make mistakes, and then worse mistakes, and then irreversible mistakes.  What we fail to realize early on that is the dear Lord has a plan for our lives, just like the picture on the box lid.  We fail to realize that our picture and God’s picture aren’t the same.  But the dear Lord knows what is best for us; He knows how our picture should turn out.  We would do well to let the Lord pick out the picture.  Then all of the pieces would come together much better.  “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5,6