Do you like to solve jigsaw puzzles? Can you imagine solving a 20-piece puzzle without a picture? Pretty easy, right? How about a 100-piece puzzle without knowing what the final product looks like? I guess that just got a tad difficult! Now imagine a jigsaw puzzle with billions of pieces but you were not shown what the final completed picture was. Where would you even start? How would you know what piece fits where?

Yesterday while I was lamenting to someone about what the next big direction of my life was going to be, I had an epiphany: my life is like a jigsaw puzzle and each second constitutes a puzzle piece of my life. So far, over a billion pieces have been put together already and there are so many more pieces to go until the final picture is done. This is where faith and trust take center stage.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:6 NIV

Faith allows us to envision what the next puzzle piece of our life is- allows us to hope beyond the now to a future state; to be assured that the next piece of the puzzle whatever it is will be just the right piece that needs to interlock with the piece before and the piece that will come after. Not all the pieces will be joyful, indeed some will be filled with sorrow, heartbreak, and disappointment- but rest assured, they all fit together to paint the complete picture of your life.

What’s more, even though we do not know the full picture of the sum our lives and we live through life one puzzle piece at a time, there is someone who has the full picture and is actually the Orchestrator of each puzzle piece. Afterall, many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails (Proverbs 19 :21). Scripture encourages us to put our trust in the One who has the master plan for our lives. It says:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.

Proverbs 3: 5-6 NLT

Why? because He knows the full picture and knows how the next piece fits into the next and the next. The reality is, even though we think we are in the drivers seat of our lives, there is nothing farther from the truth. Proverbs 20: 24 clues us in:

A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?

In fact, that is the source of all anxiety and worry: thinking that we can fit together the billions of pieces of our lives without a picture of where pieces are supposed to go. Sometimes if we are lucky, we succeed in fitting just the right piece on “our own” without the help of the master “Puzzler.” More often than not, we pick the wrong piece and try to jam it into a space that it was not designed to fit into. We end up with choices that we regret or with more heartache than we should have had. But thanks be to God who leads us in His triumph and gives us victory through Jesus Christ our Lord! Jesus takes those “wrong pieces” and works them out for our good and His glory sake. This is why we can look back on some of the self-inflicted messes in our lives and they appear to all still be connected to a larger picture. God works out everything back into place within the puzzle. How? Only the Master Craftsman knows! And the best thing we can do for ourselves is to put our trust in His plan- the one that brings us to an expected end and gives us a future and a hope! When you feel overwhelmed with what the next steps of your life should be and you are unsure if that move, that decision, that action is the right one or not, can I encourage you to say this to your soul:

But I trust in You, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in Your hands…

Psalm 31:14-15a BSB

Indeed He’s got times and seasons in His hands- in my home we call it the bird’s eye view. He has the bird’s eye view of our lives; he sees the whole picture which is why He alone is the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2)! From our first cry to our final breath, He commands our destinies! So friends, will you join me today to trust God for the next step in whatever season of life you are in? The next piece of your life’s puzzle is in His hand.

Yours truly.